Back to the Recipes – Bengali Beef Curry

So now back to recipe writing! Otherwise I’ll never clear the backlog and make space for more exciting and new culinary creations:)! The emotional stuff will then seep into the blog as and when anyway.

Here’s a classic Bengali dish that I love and we have both at my parents in London and with my family in Bangladesh. Of course there’s a difference in the dish depending on who cooks it. Cooking is a tradition that’s gets primarily passed on from mothers to daughters so they are able to cook for their future hubbies (not a bad thing). I left home in my late teens and of course could not imagine the possibility of life without Bengali food. So my mum showed me a couple of my favourite dishes which I then cooked again and again. And if you can cook one Bengali dish then the others follow naturally. I cooked bengali chicken curry and my all time ever favourite dish in the world- bengali lamb chop curry with potatoes and tomatoes. Yumm!! 🙂 Of course only my mum’s version of the chop  curry is my number 1! She is after all the best cook in the world. Anyone can of course validly dispute this with their own mothers or fathers :-).

Anyway, here is a recipe of neither of the above dishes but a Bengali Beef Curry with potatoes (we love our meat curries with potatoes in my family).

When I cook Bengali dishes I tend to add a twist like kaffir lime leaves or galangal. Both of these I have never seen in Bangladesh. Neither have I seen pak choi or lemongrass. But as I love these ingredients, I throw them in when I feel like it. For an authentic Bengali curry dish, leave these out. There are also many supplementary spices that are used to really add another dimension to the flavour and subtle aromas from this rich multitude of deliciously combined spices. I’m always amazed how so many different flavours are wonderfully combined and nurture and complement each other for the taste buds to reach new sensual highs. That must have taken centuries to get it right. The supplementary spices can include: whole black pepper, mustard seeds,  fennel seeds, anise and more that I can’t think of right now.

I’m not using mixed curry powder in these recipes as they are not used widely in Bangladesh. Everyone uses freshly ground spices  like I have. We do use them in London though. I’ll write about this in the coming week.

Beef Rendang 2

The title isn’t quite as catchy as star wars 2 or jaws 2 but I couldn’t think of anything better. This is the second time I made this dish (the title says it doesn’t it??) The recipe differs slightly from the first time so I’m gonna post it. I also cooked it in about 2 1/2 hours, much less time than the first time. The reason for this is that one of my portable cookers has a minimum flame level that isn’t low enough. And because I was doing so much cooking at once I had to use it. I almost burnt…….actually I did burn the rendang dish slightly. So without the low flame it cooked in almost half the time. Still delicious!! 🙂

Beef Rendang the Indonesian way

Here’s an amazing dish that I’ve made a couple of times since the first time a few months ago. I ate this dish for the first time in Kuala Lumpur last year in one of the millions of food halls in some mega shopping mall. Sorry can’t tell you the names of either the shopping mall or the food court. I’ve got no knack for names and especially before the blog I never had a need to.

Yes it takes ages and ages-the recommended slow cooking time is about 4 hours. But it is well worth it!! It tastes even better the day after. And I must say the succulent flavours of the meat and the spices knocked me out of my culinary taste-buds! I don’t think I’ve had any beef dish that was soooo delicious for a very long time. Our Bengali beef curries are also very, very delicious if cooked well. But this is so different from what I knew before!!

This recipe is from one of my favourite foodie blogs:

http://norecipes.com/blog/beef-rendang-recipe/

Fried Beef Vegetables with Red Fire Ants and Grilled Snake

There are so many strange foods here that it’s amazing. Look totally hideous and disgusting at first sight….and second and third….(absolutely no offense meant to anyone’s eating culture-just my personal private thoughts) but after a couple of beers and someone else chomping away happily at it in front of you, the curiosity of how does it taste (once I get over the fact of how it looks) does get the better of me.