Beef Rendang

This beautiful Indonesian dish is a slow-cooked stew of beef with coconut and spices, which reduces down over hours of cooking so the meat is meltingly tender coated with a rich, aromatic sauce. 
There are lots of recipes for rendang, each differing slightly.  The constants are lemongrass, ginger, coconut, tamarind (or another sour element like lime juice) and sugar.  This is how I like to make it, relying more on the fresh 'spices' rather than going in heavy with cinnamon sticks, cumin seeds and cardamom pods.  It is best made the day before it is to be eaten.
I love to serve this quite simply with fragrant jasmine rice and maybe a steamed green veg.

Serves 2-3

Ingredients

500g Chuck Steak (or any braising beef), cut into chunky pieces

1 Red Onion, roughly chopped

4 large cloves of Garlic, roughly chopped

2 Red Chillies, roughly chopped

2 thumb sized pieces of Ginger, grated (should be about 2 tablespoons)

1 stalk of Lemongrass, finely sliced

2 tablespoons Sunflower Oil

1 teaspoon Ground Coriander

Half a teaspoon Turmeric

Half a teaspoon Cinnamon

400ml Tin of Coconut Milk

4 Kaffir Lime Leaves

3 teaspoons of Tamarind Paste (or more lime juice if you can't get it)

Juice of half a Lime

Sea Salt

1 teaspoon Sugar (palm sugar if you have it but don't buy it especially)

25g Desiccated Coconut

• Put the chopped onion, garlic, chillies, ginger and lemongrass into a blender or mini-chopper and whizz until very finely chopped.  You can do this on a board with a sharp knife if you don't have a blender.
• Pour the oil into a large saucepan and put on a medium heat.  Tip the onion paste into the oil and cook for a few minutes then add the coriander, turmeric, cinnamon and a generous seasoning of salt.  Continue to cook for another 5ish minutes until it is turning golden brown and aromatic then add the beef.
• Stir the beef to coat it in all the spicy onion mixture and seal it.  Pour in the coconut milk then add the kaffir lime leaves, tamarind paste and sugar.  Bring to the boil then turn down to the slowest simmer.
• This now needs to be simmered slowly for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally to make sure there is nothing sticking to the bottom of the pan.  If you prefer you can cook this in the oven on a low heat.
• The result you want to achieve with a rendang is to reduce the majority of the liquid until there is hardly any sauce left.  However, I like to do this in a couple of stages; when the sauce has reduced greatly and the oil begins to come out, turn the heat off and leave to cool for 20 to 30 minutes.  You should then be able to pour off most of the excess oil.  At this point it's good to taste the sauce, add the lime juice if needed and salt or sugar to balance.  You can now continue to cook the rendang or it can be chilled until you are ready to serve it.
• In a dry frying pan toast the desiccated coconut until golden brown (be careful because it burns easily) then give it a blitz in a blender. 
• When you are ready to serve the rendang put it on a low heat and, when it starts to bubble stir in the toasted coconut.  Simmer for 5-10 minutes until piping hot and serve.