Dad’s Cooking -Phanaeng Beef Curry in sweet peanut sauce

I had a challenge to put together something for Easter 2010 as part of a all male culinary celebration. A meat dish with beef was what appealed to me a couple of weeks before Easter although the final decision on its make did not take place till a couple of days before Easter. I did have mental images of what it would look like although at that time and going by some of my previous experiences, it had all the ingredients of a  disaster in the making.

Finally – Googled ‘Thai Beef Curry’ and a recipe for the above mentioned dish ended up on the first page .

Ingredients – Thai cooking necessarily has a couple of must have’s – fresh ingredients, lemon grass  , coconut and beef. The rest can be improvised. Spent the Saturday before Easter shopping at the fresh produce markets around Flemington in Sydney.

How to go about putting it together:-

Beef – suggest chuck steak which needs to be thinly sliced. A slice about 5mm in width should be sufficient using a sharp knife. I would also suggest you avoid the prime cuts of meat …curry needs time for the flavours to percolate the meat and as a prime cut of meat cooks in no time, it does not go well with a curry.

Lemon grass – you can pick up 4 stalks for around $2.00 at most Asian stores. On average you will need 1 stalk / 1 Kg of meat. Peel the outer layers from the grass till the white inner layer is exposed. Cut the stalk into 2 – 3 mm thick slices

Coconut milk – Pick up 3 cans of coconut full flavoured milk. Fresh Coconut always adds flavour to a dish that needs coconut, however its a difficult ingredient to find.

Peanuts – pick up some unsalted roasted peanuts from any store. If they come in the salted variety then its also fine to use – reduce the salt in the final product. Grind the peanuts in a food processor – the lesson I picked up was to grind it for say 10 secs till the nuts are broken into tiny pieces. Over grinding it makes it all sticky as the oil from the nut gets extracted and causes the pieces to gell together. Around 100g / 2Kg of meat should be adequate.

Spices – This is my variation from the Thai recipe. Take piece of ginger the size of your pinky and cut it into think slices. Around 5 – 7 garlic cloves and 2 – 3 chillies and say one onion roughly chopped. Throw all these ingredients and the lemon grass in a blender and add some water . Blend to a reasonably smooth paste. The paste will look white to red in colour depending on the onion that was used (Spanish onion is red in colour !!)

Additional ingredients – red curry paste (2 – 3 teaspoons), fish sauce (3 – 5 teaspoons), 1 – 2 teaspoons of brown/white sugar. One of the secrets of most Asian cooking is that it needs the 3 flavours – sweet, sour and pungency to blend together …hence the need of fish sauce and sugar. The measures I have provided is a guide ..when you add it , taste the sauce and add extra depending on your preference.

A couple of cloves, nutmeg ,a cinnamon stick / powder and 4 – 5 cardamon pods

That’s it, you are now ready to take a final plunge into the creation of this dish.

Empty a can of coconut milk into the meat . Half fill the empty can with water and empty it into the meat. Add the cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and cardamon pods and let the mixture boil till the meat is cooked. Add some salt to taste ..literally taste the mixture to judge its flavour. As the meat cooks, it would appear that the coconut milk curdles …it will work out fine as it cooks. Add more water in case all the liquid dries out and the meat is still not cooked. Depending on the quality of the meat this step could take 1/2 hour to 1 hour.

In a saucepan, empty the remaining 2 cans of coconut milk, the blended spices, fish sauce and sugar. Heat the liquid blend till it boils – reduce the heat and add the 2 teaspoons of red curry paste. (You need to be careful here ..check the ingredients on the bottle ..red colour in most cases is artificial and in some kids this causes a problem). As the mixture boils – taste the sauce and increase any ingredient as desired.

Add the sauce to the meat and boil the mixture with the peanut powder till the sauce thickens . The final colour could be a mild to dark red depending on the additive colour in the red curry paste. What is important is that it tastes heaven over steamed Basmatic rice.

Another secret – A curry dish always tastes better after its kept for a day as it gives the spices a chance to percolate the meat.

I will post the recipe on Nature Shops Web Site with a picture of the final product and also provide some alternative ingredients in case you are lazy to shop for the fresh ingredients .

Look forward to your comments.

Mat

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