With the renewed find of the toko around the corner to get some fresh spices, that is also when the renewed love for long cooking stoves came back again.
I mean living in a cold country it means that you don't always have the option to get all of the herbs, roots and spices that you want. You have to dig a bit further which isn't at all a bad thing. It just means that you have some work to do in there.
I went for a visit and got me a super decent stash of Laos (galangal) and lemongrass and also stored a stash int he freezer. Because this stuff stays very decent in the freezer for a reasonable period of time, why not stash it for some easy to use things.
This time in the slowcooking sessions on the Sunday was 'Beef Rendang'. A good old classic that I guess a lot of people will appreciate. Using as a guide for this I went for the recipe from Tast Asian Food for some inspiration in the ingredients. And this one took a lot of time, but is soooo rewarding
I usually adjust my amounts of spices to the amount of beef that I have, this here was around 2 pounds or 1 kilo of beef, coming straight from the local farmer who who occasionally sends a cow to the butcher and then sells the meat.
Because of this, there is no middle man in this purchase so the meat is cheap and the taste is good. I guess these cows are super happy walking here in the local fields.
Chop that meat into some 2 cm chunks and let it come to room temperature before you use it.
It all starts with making the base flavour
With all of these dishes the bottom line in there is that you have to give it enough time for the flavours to sink into the dish. That takes time but it also needs a decent chunk of marination time. And this means marination directly into the pan with the meat in there.
Now remember...I freewheel a LOT with these ingredients, and then later on add something if necessary. You can only add stuff, removing aint an option!
So what do you need in this base for it?
- 4 cashew nuts. (The original recipe says candlenuts but I don't have those so went for the alternative
- 10 cloves chopped garlic (the recipe said 12 but this seemed enough)
- 5 large chillies (the recipe said300 g red chili, but that seemed a bit too drastic for me)
- 4 big onions (the recipe said 250 gram)
- 50 g ginger
- 50 g galangal (essential for the flavour!!!)
- 25 g ground turmeric, or 50g of fresh turmeric
- 1½ tsp ground coriander
- 4 green cardamom pods (the toko has these)
- 11/2 tsp cumin seeds
- 5 cloves (the recipe said 10 cloves, but this sounded a bit wild)
Put all of this in a blender and give this a serious blend. Now I don't know how this works for you guys, but my blender sucks and when everything is too dry it doesn't blend right at all.
I always need to toss in some form of additional fluid to make it happen, so I tossed in a bit of vegetable oil, since you will be cooking in this later on. That helped getting everything together in a nice paste.
On to the cooking process
From this point on your house will smell like awesome food forever. Take a gigantic pan and heat some vegetable oil (I used a bit of oil in the paste so I took less into the pan) and toss the paste in there on low heat so it doesn't burn. Keep stirring in there!!
When you see the vegetable oil separate from the spices then you can toss in your beef chunks. This takes a couple of minutes. Make sure that all the beef chunks are good in the paste so mix it all together properly.
This is also the time where you add to the cooking pan
- 600 ml of coconut cream
- 100 ml of warm water (it never says how much this actually should be) so I start with not that much water, as you can always add.
In the mean time I prepared and added this so the cooking pot
- 4 stalks of lemongrass, bashed and cut into half
- 5 kaffir lime leaves (the recipe said 3 but I just love this!!)
- half a tsp of salt
The recipe also said to use asam keping and turmeric leaves, but I just didn't have this at all. The alternative to use fresh tamarind was also not here...That is just the way it is...
And that is when the waiting starts
Now the waiting game is on! You bring the mixture to a little boil and just leave it boil without a lid on it. Whenever the mixture dries out a bit, just add water and leave it so simmer again.
This takes about 3 hours. You don't have to do a lot, just check every now and then and add water when needed.
About a an hour prior to when you want to serve it stop adding water in there. The mixture will reduce and also darken in colour because of the fat and oil coming out of the meat. It will start to thicken as well
This is the time where you can start tasting because when it reduces then the true flavours start to come out. You can add anything that you find there is not enough in there as yet. I added some sugar in there to taste but damn, this was already fantastic! The meat will start to fall apart and that is when your rendang is ready.
For the final finishing I also had some sweet and sour cucumber with pepper slices, some rice and some sajoer stringbeans and a beer ofcourse ;)
I know it sounds like a lot of stuff to do. But actually when you have all the ingredients into place, you just hop in every now and then to do some checking. It isn't difficult, it just takes time.
Enjoy!
For those who have missed my slowcooking sessions over the winter, I have a post about making:
Egg plant and beef stew
Tom ka Gai soup
Guilty pleasure cookies
Baguettes
Stifado
Check them out if you are hungry!