Madhur Jaffrey's Sri Lankan Beef Smore

The subtitle for this could be "When recipes go wrong!". Or maybe, "When recipes aren't tested", or even "Make sure you proof read".

We got this recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Easy book. It's well presented with pictures that just make you want to cook the recipes. And the titles of the recipes are pretty good as well. Sri Lankan Beef Smore - sounds exotic, unusual and right up my street.

The recipe:

Braising beef - chuck, blade or brisket
Salt and pepper
4 teaspoons coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/4 teaspoon fenugreek seeds - we used ground as we didn't have the seeds
4 tablespoons oil
5 cm stick of cinnamon
1 large onion - chopped
5 cm piece of ginger - grated
4 cloves garlic - chopped
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
350ml stock - beef or chicken
1 teaspoon cayenne
250ml coconut milk

All good so far, as long as you've got a decent store cupboard. The problem lies with the instructions. The recipe calls for the toasting and grinding of the seeds. No problem. But then it doesn't tell you what to do with them! A bit of an oversight.

So we decided to treat it like the Jamie Oliver brisket chili recipe, and rubbed the ground seeds into the meat. Then it's into the pan to brown. Whilst that's doing fry the onion, ginger and garlic with the cinnamon.

After a few minutes and the vinegar, stock, cayenne, salt (lots of salt) and then the beef. Bring to the boil, cover and put in a low oven until the meat is tender - which will depend on how much you're cooking. For 2, about 2 and a half hours, for 4 more like 3 and a half. Add the coconut milk 10 minutes before the end of the cooking time.

In the end it turned out ok. Not great, not fantastic and not really very hot. But ok. If I did it again I'd have to throw some chillies in there. Hot ones. But there's other things I'd do before doing this again - no doubt the subject of my next blog posts!

Kedgeree and Riesling

Kedgeree

It just sounds like something you want to eat doesn't it, Kedgeree? If I didn't know what it was I'd want to find out.

We'd had the house to ourselves for the weekend and the opportunity to cook a curry really could not be missed. We decided on fish curry but couldn't decide on exactly what kind of fish curry. But then we remembered that we'd bought some smoked haddock for a risotto in the week and decided to use a bit in this Kedgeree, which if you don't know, is a dry curry, like a biryani or a pilaf.

It's a dish that came back to England with the colonialists and historically used to be a breakfast or brunch dish. And it does make a good breakfast/brunch, particularly if you like curry, and even more so if you've just been for a swim at Portishead Lido.

It is simple to make, it could be a one pot dish if you didn't have the boiled eggs. But you should have the boiled eggs, cos the boiled eggs are good. Here's what you'll need for a dish that will feed two handsomely, with leftovers:

2 fillets of smoked haddock
2 boiled eggs, quartered (or more if you like)
A finely chopped onion
A finely chopped chilli (or more depending on your appetite for heat)
A thumb sized piece of ginger, grated or finely chopped
A generous teaspoon of black mustard seeds
Garam masala (you know, curry powder, heat to your liking)
2 bay leaves
Some chopped, fresh coriander
A good squeeze of lemon or lime juice
15 fl oz of basmati rice

There's a couple of stages to the cooking, but a sensible place to start is boiling your eggs. For good boiled eggs, put them into a pan of cold water. Bring the water to a boil and then boil the eggs for 6 minutes. Once done, stick them into some iced water and set aside.

Next, cook the haddock. Simply add the whole fillets to a large, high-sided frying pan and cover with about 650ml of boiling water. Throw in the bay leaves, cover, and simmer for 10-15 mins.

When the haddock is cooked, remove it from the water, wrap in foil and put in a low oven to keep warm. Don't pour away the water! You need it for the rice.

Rinse and dry the frying pan then get it back on a medium heat. Add a good knob of butter and then and your curry powder and black mustard seeds. Allow them a couple of minutes, stirring all the time, then add the  chopped onion, chilli and ginger. Let them soften for a while.

After a few minutes add the rice and give that a stir to coat it in the spice/onion mix. After a minute or so add the water that the haddock was cooked in. Stir again, get it back up to a boil and let it boil for a minute. Then turn the heat down as low as possible, cover and leave to simmer 15 minutes. Do not remove the lid. After 15 minutes take off the lid, take the pan from the heat and cover with a damp tea towel. Leave for 5 minutes. After that time flake the rice with a fork for perfect, fluffy grains that don't stick.

Before the rice is done, shell your boiled eggs and either halve or quarter them. Also, remove the fish from the oven.

Kedgeree

When the rice is cooked, flake in the haddock, stir through the chopped coriander, squeeze over a bit of lemon or lime juice and add the eggs.

We served ours with a bit of mango chutney as it's is virtually impossible for us to have a curry without mango chutney. Our wine choice was a very nice Riesling, recommended to us by Corks of Cotham. It was a superb match. The wine heightened the spice and seemed to take the taste all around my mouth. The aftertaste left an almost sherbertty tingle right in the middle of my tongue along with a satisfying bite of chilli heat.

As I wrote at the top, the quantities given are enough for two with leftovers. Which polished off for brunch today after another swim at the Lido. Any weekend with two curries in it is a good weekend.