A Dish a Day: Beef Rendang (for ten)

Ramblings from a voracious eater on the dish that made her day

Beef rendang and green beans with prawns and coconut

‘It’s England v France on Saturday, can we host the match?’ he asks. It’s rugby season. The Six Nations is about to begin. I can tell he wants to cook beouf bourguignon (or to be patriotic, beef stew).

I’ve got other ideas. I’ve a craving for spices and chilli and put my case in for Nonya food from Malaysia. I have in mind the deep, complex textures of beef rendang; pieces of beef shin cooked down in coconut milk until tender and spiced with the flavours of South-East Asia: lemongrass, galangal, chilli… ‘Indulge me,’ I plead.

‘Okay, but what’s that got to do with England (or France for that matter)?’

‘Umm...’

‘I suppose there is Rory and Tony Underwood…’

Rory Underwood was a rugby hero of mine when I was younger, the England wing whose Malaysian-Chinese heritage made our family proud whenever he was on the pitch. He reminded me of my older brother, my other rugby hero (though only for about three years, and on a cold, Hertfordshire school pitch). When both he and his brother Tony played for England, the camera would pan onto their diminutive mother, who fiercely cheered at the sides. We adored her in our household, and enjoyed the incongruity of stern Chinese mother letting rip at a rugby match.

And so the conversation goes on and the ‘Underwood menu’ is born: beef rendang, green beans in a light prawn and coconut sauce, and tamarind chicken. At kick-off, the rendang is ready; each piece coated with four hours of flavour. It’s had a lot of oven love.

England loses. By a sliver of a breath. The room is inconsolable. There’s only one thing to do, and that’s to tuck into seconds.

Bruising the rendang spices before putting in the spice grinder

Beef Rendang (serves 8-10)

In the past, I’ve cooked rendang with more spices – star anise, cinnamon, cardamom. This time I used a recipe from ‘The New Mrs Lee’s Cookbook: Nonya Cuisine’ as a base, which calls for minimal spices. I've also adapted proportions and cooking time (her recipe calls for boiling for 30 minutes, but the shin would be toughened by rapid cooking).

3 onions, sliced

1.8kg beef shin, diced

3 x 400ml cans of coconut milk

3 slices of tamarind block soaked in 400ml boiling water, then paste squeezed through a sieve (available from Chinese supermarkets)

2 handfuls of dessicated coconut – toasted in a dry pan until light brown. These give texture to the tender pieces of shin

2 tablespoons palm sugar

Salt

In the spice grinder: rendang spice paste

12 slices galangal

12 slices ginger

12 cloves garlic

6 red chillies (usually made with 15 dried chillies, but I only have fresh ones)

3 stalks lemon grass (white part only)

3 tablespoons ground coriander

1 and ½ teaspoons ground cumin

Preheat the oven to 160C or 140C (fan oven).

Bruise and roughly chop the rendang paste ingredients, before either pounding (hard work) or spice grinding into a paste.

In a big heavy bottomed pan, add the spice paste and the rest of the ingredients. Stir to make sure every piece of beef is mixed well with the coconut milk.

Half cover the pan with a lid and stew in the oven for 2 hours. Bring up to the stove top and skim the fat off with a spoon. It’s worth doing this as there will be a lot.

Bubble for another 1-2 hours on a medium heat until a third of the gravy is left. Stir frequently to avoid the stew sticking to the bottom of the pan. The stew should be quite dry and change colour to a deep deep brown.

Serve with rice.

Other rendang recipes

Feast to the World contends that rendang doesn’t have coconut milk or tamarind in it. I look forward to trying his recipe here.

For another variation, here’s a recipe for ox cheek and venison rendang.

Ode to the Skirt Steak: Recipes and Where to Eat it

I love steak. So much so that I’ve belonged to a steak club for over five years, once ate steak five times in one week and still brazenly cook it in order to make friends. I remember being unable to afford a full three-courses at Hawksmoor when it first opened, but going to steak club and spanking £45 just on a juicy rib eye and absolutely nothing else. That’s how much I love steak. 



I’m a fan of the textured cut - one with a bit of chew and packs a meaty flavour punch. And so I introduce one of my favourite cuts - the skirt steak or bavette. It’s a cheaper cut (at one butchers the fillet is £45/kg, whereas skirt will be about £14.50/kg) but no less inferior. It’s a flat steak with beautiful marbling and takes flavour and marinating well (Anthony Bourdain recommends it grilled over an open fire of dried grape vines or good wood) and benefits from the smokiness of a Josper grill (like Les Deux Salons near Covent Garden). 

Bavette with Green Sauce at Duck Soup, Soho

You’ll find it on many a menu in London - I've seen it gracing Galvin's and Vinoteca's. Most recently, I ate one at Dean Street’s Duck Soup - sliced into ribbons and lifted with green sauce and served with sumac-sprinkled new potatoes and wilting wild garlic. 

But this is the easiest thing to cook at home. I find there’s nothing quite like a potter round the butchers and bringing home that precious, vermillion and marbled slab of meat, and unwrapping the paper like a present. The Ginger Pig’s skirt is second to none but we’ve had great ones from our local butcher down on the Northcote Road. 

Because it’s a coarse steak, it’s fit for the extremes of flash-frying or slow-cooking. I’ve not tried the slow-cooking before largely due to impatience (why wait 3 hours for something that takes five minutes?) So instead here are a few quick recipes on what to do with this magnificent cut. 

A few things to do with a skirt steak

How to cook the steak

Leave the steaks out so that they are room temperature. Lightly oil and season both sides liberally just before you’re going to cook it. Heat a flat-bottomed pan until smoking hot, and sear the steak on both sides for literally two minutes one side, a minute and a half on the other (I put my timer on). Do not be tempted to move the steak around in the pan. Leave to rest for 5 minutes.

With shallots

In the same pan, with the steak juices, heat up some more oil and cook finely chopped shallots with a sprinkling of sugar to caramelise and salt on a lower heat for 5 minutes. When a glorious brown, sprinkle on top of the steak. 

With garlic and parsley butter

Make a garlic and parsley butter about an hour or two before by mixing butter with finely chopped parsley and half a clove of crushed garlic. Roll into a sausage, wrap with clingfilm and put in the fridge to firm up. When ready to serve your steak, slice disks of butter, take the clingfilm off, place atop the unsliced steak and let it melt in the residual heat.

Steak sandwich

Steaks on the Japanese barbecue soon to turn into...steak sandwiches

Make a steak sandwich with a healthy smear of Tracklements horseradish and onions. 

(Fantastic and quick for entertaining as we did here on the Japanese barbecue)

Please do let me know if you have any more bavette recipes (more excuses to cook steak). 

In praise of the doggy bag. Recipe: Leftover porterhouse steak salad

The doggy bag... (box) from Dean Street Townhouse
How English of us to be embarrassed by the doggy bag. Sweeping up those bits we’ve chosen not to scoff, taking them home to reheat dodgy-style in a microwave.

How tight. How uncouth.

But surely it’s the second highest compliment a restaurant can receive: that the food was so fabulous and generous, we’d like to eat it again, thank you very much. The first compliment, of course, would have been to love it the first time round.

Well, the asking for the doggy bag needn’t be embarrassing nor confined to the back-street Chinese restaurant.

The porterhouse steak and béarnaise sauce
I’ve never been shy of asking (it’s my Chinese genes). My last doggy bag was from the impeccable Dean Street Townhouse in Soho. The Scottish porterhouse steak is a beast of a dish, all tender tenderloin fillet one side of the bone, and beefy sirloin on the other. Enriched with custardy yellow béarnaise and accompanied by thin-cut chips.

It wasn’t a cheap meal, this. In fact this beast will set you back a good £65, and it rather defeated us on the night. But it turned into a fantastic salad supper the day after (recipe below), and saved us having to pick up anything new.

Dean Street Townhouse was gracious enough to accept the compliment. In fact, they were prepared for it and as soon as we asked, packed us off with a fancy box and a bag. After our waiter informed us that many fail to finish the Porterhouse, I’d wager they’d not ask for the doggy bag, which to me seems a waste of prime steak.

Our waiter did wonder if we had a dog as we asked if he could pack the bone too.

“No dog”, we replied, “just us”.

Waitrose Food Illustrated’s William Sitwell started the campaign a couple of years back, and was taken on by Jay Rayner and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, but I wonder how mainstream doggy-bagging actually is.

Is it something that you’d be happy to do? Or is it just a bit too embarrassing?

The tenderloin fillet (left) and sirloin (right) before...

...and after

Recipe: Leftover beef salad

There were heated discussions while waiting for the bill on what to do with the beef, which was to be used for the next day’s dinner. Stir fry? Pasta?

Fears that the beef would lose its already fantastic flavour cast those ideas aside. We decided to freshen up the steak with lots of vibrant herbs, and enhance rather than hide the flavour with a simple lime dressing.

Serves 2

Beef marinade
1 garlic clove
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 heaped teaspoon palm sugar
Few drops sesame oil

Leftover rare steak from last night’s blowout
100g dried vermicelli noodles

Handful of herbs - anything like fresh mint leaves, coriander, thai basil or all three is great. I like mine with mint and coriander
Scatter of dry roasted peanuts - roughly crushed with a pestle
Half a cucumber, sliced

Dressing
Juice from two limes
Fresh chilli or cheat with dollops of sweet chilli sauce

Using a pestle and mortar, crush the garlic, and then add the rest of the ingredients. Pour over the steak and marinate for at least an hour.

Cover the dried noodles with boiling water for ten minutes, then rinse under cold water

Flash fry the steak - you don’t want to cook that rareness out. If already sliced, then it’s a token heat through to take the edge off the marinade. If not, take out and leave to stand before slicing thinly.

Throw the noodles, sliced herbs, peanuts, cucumber, beef. Combine the lime juice and chilli, pour over, toss and serve.


Dean Street Townhouse

69 - 71 Dean Street

London

W1D 3SE
020 7434 1775

Thanks to Tom for the recipe

New York Tales: 2. The Burger Brunch

Forget eggs benedict and fancy fries. When your insides are wincing from margarita pain - the burger’s where it’s at.

I’m a maximalist when it comes to the burger. I once had a month’s stint in Australia, where avocado and beetroot is packed in just about everything, after which I was purist no longer. Pickle, onion, fried things, bacon bits. You know the score.

Think thick slabs of meat, wedged in bun and made sloppy with enough condiment to drip from your hands. Cheese? Oh go on then. Melt it.

That was the tonic after a night out at Industry in Hell’s Kitchen - a pulsing gay club, newly opened, box-fresh and quite frankly, too much.

I’d spent the morning-after dazedly wandering the art galleries of Chelsea, all Andy Warhol polaroids and sad artists. But by midday I had a purpose. Brunch with my friend Barry had been booked at the Mercer Kitchen in Soho and burgers awaited. Just the anticipation of eating was making me shake.

The Mercer Kitchen is a fine place - airy and busy up top, but the floor underneath in its Christian Liaigre glory is clandestine - dark with wenge-wood. You may think it's a dear place as it's a Jean-George Vongerichten number (who's just opened Spice Market in Soho, London. Read Jay Rayner's review here) but with burgers at $15 a pop, I don't think that's bad at all.

Barry chose the Niman ranch burger, adorned with only aged cheddar. Mine was called the Mercer (which surely allows the kitchen to dress it up with as fancy ingredients as possible) fussy with tart pepperjack cheese, avocado, creamy Russian dressing and crispy onions. All this glorified cheeseburger was missing was the crunch of salty bacon. Simple golden fries were served charmingly in a flowerpot.

I’d learnt to love Brooklyn Brewery lager over the weeks (the Draft House in Battersea stocks the lager and the ale) which was a handsome thing to swig with mouthfuls of chargrilled meat.

Now, the Mercer is not the best place to chow down burger in New York City. But as far as fussy burgers and good chat go, this place has the winning combination.

It’s the place to talk the morning after the night before. The place where you can avoid smug bright eyed shoppers. The place to hide from the stream of sunbeams when your eyes aren’t quite used to daylight.

I’m all for the burger brunch. Are you?


The Mercer Kitchen
99 Prince St.
New York, NY
10012

Café Boheme - the Friday Night Steak Frites

There’s a dizzying flurry of incredible restaurant openings in London this year. Providores’ Gopapa and Hawksmoor in Covent Garden, St John Hotel in Chinatown, Bar Boulud, Les Deux Salons, Polpetto...

Quite frankly, I can’t keep up.

You know if you want to eat at these places (and I do) there will be months of ‘fully booked’ or two-hour-long waits amidst the hype. And now that it’s pretty much winter and the temperature has plunged to an unsociable degree, most nights I’m happy to nurse a bottle of red wine and sit staunchly in front of the X Factor/Downton Abbey/The Apprentice.

But it’s reassuring to know when you are out post-pub you can still stumble into the depths of Soho on a Friday night and get a no-frills humble dinner without the pressure of knowing what you should order, how you should order it, snaking queues, and above all, waiting.

Seeing the pulsing bar of Café Boheme in Soho is like catching sight of the golden arches. Yes it’s busy, crammed and London Underground-esque; but push through the bottleneck of Old Compton street crowds and you reach the oasis of a familiar faux French brasserie. You tentatively ask if there’s a table on the busiest night of the week, you begin to wince as you expect that no. And then... and then... relief! They say yes.

Perhaps it’s the relief that makes the food so good. I only ever order the steak frites with a simple side salad here. The steak is a good ol’ ribeye marbled with a wonderfully unfashionable amount of fat. It’s meaty and beefy and begging to be ordered rare. The frites are almost matchstick - crispy and even better with a coat of béarnaise. It’s not the best I’ve ever had. But it’s pretty damn good.

You can tell Café Boheme is the same stock as the Shoreditch and Soho Houses, same banquettes and French tiling, impeccable service, amazing drinks. The place is reminiscent of the upmarket Cafe Rouge feel of Pastis and Balthazar in New York, but with that London crowd piling in from GAY and the throb of Bar Soho, this is something unique. The lack of pints is an oddity (only halfs, two pint jugs or bottles sold here), but it’s just an excuse to down a G&T instead.

Boheme shouldn’t be your destination. It should be the place to go when you don’t want to end the night. It should be your golden arches because it is there, just when you need it most.

Café Boheme
13 Old Compton Street

London W1D 5J
020 7734 0623

Recipe: Stir-Fried Beef with Broccoli

It’s been a long day. Today I officially called time on a six year career in advertising. I also got an amazing haircut where I was served a bottle of Prosecco. Today is not a normal day.

All I know is there is a juicy rump waiting for me in the fridge and a friendly head of broccoli and I don’t want to spend time messing with it. This is a classic supper - reassuring and damn simple.


Very Quick After-Work Beef Supper
Serves 2

Slice a nice piece of rump steak (about 300g) across the grain into strips about 2 mm thick. Marinate in a tablespoon of light soy sauce, half a tablespoon of Shaoxing wine, a few drops of sesame oil, a few drops of dark soy sauce, a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of cornflour. Leave for at least 15 minutes.

In the meantime, start putting on the rice to cook (white, long grain would be best).

Cut a broccoli into small florets, and blanch in boiling salted water for about 2 minutes until just cooked. The broccoli needs to be vibrant green and still got a satisfying bite to it.

Slice either 3 shallots or a small onion into strips, finely chop 2 garlic cloves and a small knob of ginger. Heat groundnut oil in a wok on a high heat. Throw in the onions, garlic and ginger, and fry until smelling incredible and before they turn brown.

Add in the beef, and mix quickly. Brown the beef until just cooked - I like mine a tiny bit pink inside. Add a few drops of oyster sauce (optional), more soy sauce (dark and light), Shaoxing wine and sesame oil, then mix in the broccoli. Fry until all mixed in and heated through.

Serve with rice.

Variations
if you want heat, just crumble in some chilli. If you fancy peppers, fry it in first. I usually like mine with spring onions.

Wholesomeness. Recipe for Marinated Minced Beef and Fat Courgette

Radiant Physalis

So, gardening. Creation and cultivation of life. I can’t bear that sort of responsibility amidst our daily frivolity. Oh, and given that even the supermarket parsley plant is doomed from the moment I choose it, I’ve resigned myself to the knowledge that I’m simply no good at it. My friend Sonia tended to lettuces in Cornwall, nursing them through bruising winds for weekly salads, but I assumed that was just what you did in Cornwall. (I’m slightly scared of the country. The natural silence, the lack of cars, the visible stars. The light pollution I’m used to fills city skies with a comforting gray or a lollipop orange. I fear the dark).

I’ve been following the progress of chef Alex Mackay’s tomatoes with a sort of envy. Every now and then a twitpic will appear of a stripey or purple variety of tomato and I turn green. Especially when he tells us they taste so good that they don’t ‘even need any salt’ but just a ‘brush…[of] Provencal oil and very thinly sliced basil.’
Have a look here and here and here judge for yourself.
So very wholesome. I like to admire from afar.

To me, an edible garden is ever so alien, but the absolute ideal. Decorative and full of food. When I popped to my parents last weekend I was astounded by what they’d produced and began to nurture a hope that latent gardening genes will reveal themselves when I grow up. There were…

Incipient Tomatoes

Physalis


Fat Slob Courgette and Baby Courgette


Courgette Flowers


Goji Berries - Good dried and in soups, but equally tasty fresh with honey


Blueberries


I came away from berry-nibbling and with an armful of fat courgette (overgrew as my parents went on holiday and forgot about it). It would waddle if it walked. I have vowed to start small and really look after that parsley plant next time. Baby steps.

Here’s a recipe for the fat courgette. The base of which is similar to the classic Chinese dish ‘Ants climbing trees’.

Marinated minced beef with fat courgette


Serves 4
500g minced beef or pork
Half a fat courgette - diced into large chunks
Sunflower/vegetable oil

Marinade
2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
2 tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
1 tablespoon Sesame Oil

3 bulbous spring onions - finely chopped
3 fat garlic cloves - finely chopped
Knob of ginger - finely chopped
1 dried birds-eye chilli (optional)

Sauce
2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
2 tablespoons Light soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
275mls chicken stock
1 teaspoon sugar


Marinate the beef for at least 15 minutes. It won’t hurt to leave it to settle longer.

Heat oil in a wok or a pan over high heat. Add the mince, and brown all over, stirring every now and then.

Take out the beef and put to one side.

Add some more oil over a medium high heat and add the spring onions, garlic, ginger and crumble in the chilli if using. Fry until smelling irresistibly fragrant.

Add back the beef, then add the sauce ingredients. Bring to boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Add the fat courgette pieces, cover and cook for 5 minutes more.

Serve with just cooked long grain rice.

Equation for a less-than-elegant but tasty Chinese dinner

11 people for dinner. Mine and T’s little flat. The day before, I'd bought out the contents of Loon Fung in Chinatown, scaled fish, massaged pork, armed myself with cleaver, and wondered what wines oenophile Ruth would bring to match the food.

Here’s what we eat, drink and listen to that night.

The Friends
All from university. We don’t see enough of each other, but when we do, things happen... like deciding to stalk electronic genii Daft Punk and booking a long weekend in Vegas to see them. This time - out of the 11 people in my flat, 7 are running the Belfast marathon in a few days time. In neon/spandex-tutu/superman outfits. It is my moral duty to feed everyone up.

The Menu

Bak choi and limes for the G&Ts

Tonight it’s mainly Chinese food with a bit of impro, depending on what ingredients I’m left with. During the shredding, the gutting, the fine-chopping, Anthony Bourdain’s words often whirr through my head – your first principle should be ‘meez’...’mise-en-place’. As in, getting everything you need ready so that at the last minute (and so much is last minute putting together), all your chopped garlic and onions are set out like it is when you watch Delia serenely rustle up a coq au vin.

I’ll be linking the recipes for certain dishes below in following posts.

Chinese Turnip cake with soy and chilli dipping sauce

Cantonese steamed sea-bass with shredded spring onion, ginger and coriander

Crispy five-spice belly pork with mustard and soy sauce

Shittake mushrooms cooked in their own liquor

Dried-shrimp egg fried rice

Bak choi with ginger, garlic and soy sauce

Sliced rump steak with rice noodles and spring onions

Comté, Stichelton, port and apples

Sticky ginger cake and chocolate clafoutis with crème fraîche

(My friend Rob brings cheese – one of my favourites - nutty Comté, and Stichelton – a young blue made from unpasteurised milk.
Sticky ginger cake and chocolate clafoutis with oranges and crème fraiche is brought by dessert-goddess Hannah)

The Tunes
High Contrast, Confidential: drum and bass is a spicy backdrop to the savouries.

Floorfillers 90s Club Classics: For cheese and dessert, the retro I need your loving, Dub be good to me, and Ebenezer Goode just make sense.

The Sauce
We are lucky enough to have some handpicked wines brought by my friend Ruth, and some barrel samples from a Bordeaux tasting.

Here are the wine notes for anyone who wants to know what can go with Chinese fish, pork and beef.

Stormy Cape Chenin Blanc 2009 - South Africa; easy, fruity, cheapie!
Henschke Tilly’s Vineyard 2007 - V famous Australian producer making premium wines; the Tilly’s is their ‘entry level’ white, blend of Semillon 55%, Sauvignon Blanc 20%, Chardonnay 25%; very aromatic, juicy tropical fruits, lots of body.
Quartz Reef Pinot Noir 2006 - 100% Pinot from v reputable New Zealand producer, winemaker Rudi Bauer has won lots of awards; savoury, juicy red fruit, spice

Bordeaux 2009:
Ch Petit Bocq 2009 St. Estephe
Ch Pierre de Montignac 2009 Medoc
Ch Pontac-Lynch 2009 Margaux

Do watch this space for the recipes.