Passport & Plate - Beef Rendang and Cashew Rice
Malaysia | Thursday, March 5, 2015 | 5 photos
Ingredients
• 2 lemongrass stalks, dry outer leaves removed, bashed
• 3 medium-sized red onions, quartered
• 6 garlic cloves, peeled
• 25g/1oz fresh root ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
• 75g/2½oz chunk galangal, peeled and roughly chopped
• 3 plump red chillies, roughly chopped without deseeding
• 3 tbsp sunflower oil
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 1.5kg/3lb 5oz good braising beef, trimmed and cut into medium cubes
• 2 cans coconut milk / 1 can & 1 pint of good chicken stock
• Bunch of fresh kaffir lime leaves (curry leaves)
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tbsp soft light brown sugar
• 2 tsp tamarind paste or freshly squeezed juice of 1 lime
• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tsp sea salt, plus extra to season
• ground black pepper
To accompany jasmine rice / cashew nuts / big bunch of coriander
To bulk up the Rendang I added 1.5 large sweet potato and 1 bag of spinach chopped into the casserole dish
How to prepare this recipe1. In a food processor combine the bashed lemongrass, onions, garlic, ginger, galangal and chillies. Blend to a fine paste (you may need to remove the lid and push the mixture down a couple of times don't worry if it looks a bit fibrous).
2. Heat the sunflower oil in a large flame-proof casserole and fry the paste gently for 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the cumin, coriander and turmeric and cook for a couple of minutes.
3. Add the beef chunks (I lightly coat in rice flour and salt and peppar) to the pan and stir to coat in the paste and spices. Cook for five minutes, stirring constantly until the meat is very lightly coloured all over. Pour the coconut milk / chicken stock and 400ml/14fl oz cold water into the casserole. Add the lime leaves/ curry leaves, cinnamon stick, sugar, tamarind paste or lime juice, soy sauce and salt and bring to a simmer.
4. Reduce the heat and leave to gently simmer uncovered for 3 to 5 hours, until the meat is meltingly tender and the sauce is very thick and rich. Stir the beef occasionally towards the beginning of the cooking time then more often as the coconut milk reduces. I put my dish in the oven on very low (120-140) instead of on the hob.
5. Spoon the curry into bowls, serve with jasmine rice and toasted cashew nuts. Enjoy.
The story behind this recipeIn 2010 I found myself in an office in down town Kuala Lumpur above a Chinese pet shop not far from Batu Caves being interviewed to work on a movie.
‘Have you ever been involved in film production before?’
‘No, my background is more Performing Arts, predominately opera.’ I coughed self consciously and smiled in I hoped was a winning and capable way. I had just come from a job in the Production office of the Royal Opera House in London, a million miles from where I sat now in a make shift office with a Malaysian director called U Wei and Sam Hobbs an Australian production designer.
‘That’ll do. When can you start.’ These guys were clearly scraping the barrel of recruitment when it came to finding enough English speaking production crew with some knowledge of the country.
I started the following day, 7th February 2010. The first thing my new boss, Sam Hobbs asked me to do was, ‘fetch us both some tucker. Get some of that Rendang stuff Bec, steamed rice and an iced tea.’
I knew about beef rending. I did not expect to find it anywhere outside. Malaysians love to eat, to feast like Kings, none of this hold back at lunch time and just grab a salad. Each lunch stop cafe has a buffet, a choice of two or three curries, vegetables, noodles or rice. The iced tea Sam was talking about came in sealed plastic bags with a straw and a lot of melting ice and sugar.
My father was asked to set up a consultancy in Kuala Lumpur when I was thirteen and my brother was eight. Our first trip to the Far East to see him was a year later. My brother a nervous flyer with a great fear of roller coasters had never looked more terrified. I could barely sit still from the excitement, it took all my self control not to whoop when the plane lifted itself up off the runway and our fourteen hour journey began. The minute I landed in the old KL airport and my skin felt the tropical, damp heat of the equator, I felt I had arrived home. Although born in Hong Kong, my memories of the Far East were hazy, we moved back when I was three and I had not been back since.
This first trip to our father’s new home opened my eyes to Asia and to Malaysia’s different tastes and personalities. For breakfast we enjoyed mango, papaya, pineapple and fresh lime. The local breakfast, roti canai. Indian inspired flat bread, ‘flying bread’ served with dhal (lentil curry) or chicken curry. I preferred a filling of egg and banana, more of a sweet pancake. The men would knead the rounds of dough, spin them wide and thin in air before slapping them down on the hot plate where the roti would brown slightly on both sides and bubble up. My brother and I tried the marmite prawns of China town, Pad Thai, Char kway teow (flat noodles, bean sprouts, chicken).
Vietnamese spring rolls, cashew nut chicken curry, fruits from Petaling street market, moon cakes for new Year filled with lotus bean and pork buns (very superior crumbly pork pie) and delicately scented custard tarts or peanut muchi for pudding.
For the next fifteen years I went to visit our father in Malaysia, every trip coming home my bags filled with mangostene, sweet chilli sauce and the dark sticky soy sauce from the Chinese supermarket Hock Choon. Now, aged 28 I found myself in Kuala Lumpur again signing a contract to work for 6 months in the Malaysian jungle on a film adaptation of a Joseph Conrad novel called Almayer's Folly with an international crew and the lofty job title, Production Coordinator for the Art Department. I had no idea what I was doing. But I did know the food, I had a ready opinion on the Malaysian cuisine, where to find the best breakfasts, ripe fruits in season, the barbecued corn sellers outside HSBC and fresh coconut water if you made the mistake of ordering a spicy rending or fish curry. I had one other string to my bow, I could negotiate rush hour traffic and drive from one end of the city to the other without breaking a sweat. Driving in Kuala Lumpur required a certain amount of courage and liberal horn use. To this day I believe it was these skills alone that got me the job.
My daily routine consisted of driving an old VW camper van with no suspension or power steering from down town KL up to Kuala Lipis in the district of Pahang, three hours drive away. The old honky tonk town of 20,000 residents harked back to an era of old British colonial rule where the rail way opened up the area for trading. The films location was dotted around the small network of villages around River Lipis and River Jelai. Sam designed a colonial traders house built on stilts, much of the action was filmed around this ‘Almayer’s Folly’ and the river. Every morning on set before the days filming began I would walk to the nearest road side cafe stop a small hut made out of corrugated iron and very little else and collect breakfast for the art department, a team of twelve hungry men and myself. I worked in a multi cultural crew from India, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia and quickly learnt we all had one thing in common, a love for the traditional Malay breakfast. Sweet Nescafe or tea (normally sweetened with condensed milk) there was no shame concerning sugar in Malaysian cuisine and Pulut rice and Rendang. The glutinous rice and the rich, dry infused spice of the beef rending woke up our taste buds and filled our bellies before a long day filming. There was something safe in that spice, you knew whatever bugs there may have been had been sat on and killed by the chilli and the long cooking time the night before.
I have never forgotten my time in the jungle, the unexpected, unlikely friends I made miles away from home all clinging on to sanity with the shreds of energy left after a three month shoot in the jungle. At times I felt I was in the middle of a strange farce, getting stopped by traffic police with a prosthetic corpse in the boot wrapped up in a cellophane bag on my way to film the big ‘death scene’ worried about the rubber melting in the heat of my un air conditioned van, or getting caught in a monsoon and part of the road disappearing into more of a mud slide into the river, another high point.
I will never forget the precious minute’s peace I found on my walk at dawn to get breakfast, before the heat of the day descended on the sleepy villages and the inevitable sweat began to run off our faces as we re-shot scene after scene before the light faded. The smiley faces of the cafe owner and his young staring family, sitting amongst the scrawny chickens waiting for my vast orders of sticky rice, beef Rendang and sweet coffees and one ripe papaya or branch of small sweet bananas.
I wanted to recreate beef Rendang for my friends when I returned. Although it took four years to get there, to find the right curry leaves and spices from china town in London. I managed it, a feast for fourteen. The best thing about this dish is the tenderness of the beef and the combination of spices with coconut milk cooked on low heat for hours and hours improving the flavour the longer you keep it and making your mouth sing with excitement. It is so easy to get stuck in a routine of food and buy the same ingredients every week. I found myself searching for a root that looks like alien fingers called galangal, learning how you can freeze curry leaves and lime leaves and they keep wonderfully, buying cashew nuts wholesale and cooking them till they begin to smell sweet and nutty turning golden and serving with dried chilli and fried curry leaves. I found myself getting back in touch with Lai whose knowledge of street food made each lunch time in Malaysia an adventure.
I share this recipe with you today and various photos from my trip in the hope you will consider me for the Sri Lankan food odyssey trip.
