Dish 5: Mid-Week Beef Curry

The dish

What to say about this dish? I love curries, so I was excited this one out. Moreover, because I do have a full-time job, mid-week seems like a call from heaven. After all, a mid-week dinner is supposed to be fast, right?

Wrong! This dish takes about 2 (two) hours to prepare, so unless you are self-employed, currently between jobs or a stay-at-home parent, this is definitely not - and I do mean definitely not! - a dish that's suitable for your average rushed mid-week day.

Andy Allen, if ever you read this: mid-week should mean a preparation and cooking time of 20-30 minutes, not 120. (Yes, yes, I know I should have read through the recipe sooner...)

The preparation

This dish seems pretty straightforward. You take some spices and chuck them in a large pan (yay, I love chucking!), together with some meat and other ingredients such as finely chopped onion and red chillies. 

Unfortunately getting all of the correct spices turned out to be a little trickier than anticipated. You should know that I have a lovely best friend/flatmate who takes care of getting most groceries. She ended up visited approximately five different stores all over town to locate the final few ingredients. This means that in the end I did have to cheat a little, since I technically did not have all of the spices necessary.

Once you do have all ingredients, the dish is incredibly simple to prepare. You start out by chopping up a fair amount of beef, which can take up quite a bit of time if you want to make sure you have gotten rid of all of those sneaky tendons. However, once you've done that, the hardest part is over. Huzzah!

Then you proceed to dry-roast your spices. In my case, only one of three was available in seed-format, so I used the ground version of the other two. In comes one of the best things in the world: the mortar and pestle. I bought mine about half a year ago, but had yet to use it for the very first time. 

It was glorious, I can tell you! Even if I wasn't the one who thought up which spices had to be ground together, there is something about creating your own spice mix that makes you feel like a proper cook, instead of the usual easy grab a pre-fab concoction from the shop.

Once the meat is browned, you use the same pan to fry the other ingredients and spices before you put the meat back in there with some stock and lemon juice. And then the waiting game starts.

I did a workout while the curry was simmering away, which made my initial feeling of hunger fade, as it does when you wait long enough.

Approximately two hours and a pan of boiled basmati rice later (I don't even know how to steam rice), it was finally time to dine!

The result

Was it tasty? Hell yes. There was a slight error in judgement, which caused my final version of the dish to be a little more sour than intended, but it was delicious nevertheless. Change the name to a Mid-Weekend Beef Curry and I'm all for it! Oh, and guess what? My onion-loating best friend didn't even mind the onion so much. Score!

Next time

Although I was planning on making something out of Ben's section of the book, all the deep frying that was involved kind of put me off... for now. Instead I'll try my hand at what I grew up with as a proper Sunday dinner: Simple Chicken Satay (p. 31). And yes, I did check the preparation time beforehand. Also, it's called Simple, so if it ends up being difficult, I know where to find you! ;)

See you at our next elemental meal!