Beef Rendang

This is the CC's second-favorite beef dish with the honors going to steak tartare.

A true masterpiece of Indonesian cooking but it does take some work to make. It requires a ton of time and it's even better the next day. The CC once started it at five in the evening which turned out to be a terrible idea. The hungry hordes waited and we ate at ten at night.

The CC suggests starting at noon for dinner. The dish literally makes itself. All you need is a timer and towards the end a little bit of stirring every 10 minutes. (This is one of those places where a large non-stick flat pan works great!)

Rendang is actually a preservation technique not significantly different from the French duck confit or the Philippine adobo. It's as much a mechanism of preserving the meat in the absence of refrigeration as it is a cooking technique.

(There's a reason that the meat is tender but almost dry and coated with a fatty sheen and the list of spices includes garlic, shallots, ginger, galangal, and especially turmeric all of which have strong anti-microbial and anti-fungal properties.)

The recipe is adapted from James Oseland. (He skips a few crucial spices but since these are old-hat to people used to Indian cooking, the CC has restored them.)

Traditionally, made with water buffalo, you really want the leanest cut of beef that you can get — boneless chuck, top round, bottom round, or even shoulder. It's going to be braised in coconut milk and a ton of spices so there will be the plenty of time for the dish to turn meltingly tender.

James Oseland does have one of the great lines of all time:

Rendang has its own lethargic cooking rhythm, so that the more you try to rush it, the longer it seems to take.

This is talking truth to lazy cooks. Just let it do it's own thing, stir it occasionally, indulge in a book or a crossword, and it will make itself.  It has its own meditative rhythm which cannot be rushed.

The accompaniment (shown below) is a classic nasi kuning (= turmeric rice) which is nothing more than rice boiled with fresh turmeric and salt — pandanus leaves if you have them.

(Note that traditional nasi kuning would generally be cooked with coconut milk but if you do that for such a rich dish, the two would clash so you should go with the simpler style.)

While the recipe is complexly spiced, it's emphatically not "spicy". It has a layered complexity not pure heat.

You will need a side salad and while the CC went with greens and tomatoes (which is a tad French); you'll be equally well served with the classic — slices of cucumbers, salt, and whole chillies.

 
Ingredients

Flavoring Paste

1 whole nutmeg (cracked)
5 cloves
2 cardamoms
1/4 tsp cumin

5 candlenuts (read notes)

1 largish piece of turmeric (or 2 small ones)
2" ginger
2" galangal
3 stalks lemongrass (sliced diagonally very thin)

5-7 fresh red chilis (more if you like it spicy)

3 cloves garlic

6 shallots (coarsely chopped)

dash of palm sugar (substitute by brown sugar)

Main

2 lbs boneless beef chuck (or bottom round) - cubed in 2" pieces
2 1/2 cups coconut milk

1/2 cup asam keping water
1/2 cup roasted dried coconut

3 thick stalks lemongrass (tied into a knot)
1 piece cinnamon stick
7 whole kaffir lime leaves
5 whole daun salan leaves (read notes)
salt

To Serve

1 tbsp kaffir lime leaves (very finely shredded)

Note 1: You will need a mortar and pestle. No, the food processor will not work. Deal with it! The CC knows that people claim it does including Oseland but it gets the textures all wrong. Oddly, the shallots are not soft enough to just dice finely. You need to pound them.

Note 2: Add kosher salt to the mixture while you are pounding soft ingredients. It makes it far easier to control the texture. You won't need to add salt to the final product.

Note 3: Candle nuts are hard to find outside of specialty stores. While most recipes call for macadamia, the CC finds that hazelnuts actually provide the right kind of fat content and taste. You will need 10 hazelnuts since candle nuts are larger.

Note 4: You're bluntly going to have trouble finding asam keping (= "garcinia atroviridis".) Your best choice is to use kudampuli from Southern Indian cooking (= "garcinia cambogia"  or "garcinia gummi-gutta".) If you are totally stuck, use the North Indian kokum (= "garcinia indica") or even in the worst case, plain ol' tamarind. (This makes less difference than you think. It's primary job is the both tenderize the meat and make it less "meaty" while adding a subtle sour flavor.)

Note 5: The remaining fresh spices are easily available at your local Thai store. They're so popular now that the CC found all of them this weekend at his local farmers' market. The dried spices are Indian classics. You should be able to find them in any supermarket or even cheaper in the Indian markets. Use whole ones freshly ground not pre-ground ones!

Note 6: The leaves known as daun salan are actually dried leaves of the cassia tree. Not cinnamon but cassia. They are called tējapattā in Hindi (= तेजपत्ता, literally: "cinnamon leaves") and you find them in Indian stores labeled as "bay leaves" which is complete nonsense since they taste nothing like traditional bay laurel. (If you don't have them, your best bet is a smattering of cinnamon or cassia although the dried leaves are stronger in flavor so amp it up a notch or two.)

Note 7: The two absolute non-negotiables are lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves both of which add very strong citrus notes. In fact, as you read in the recipe below, you need more kaffir lime leaves finely slivered to add to the beef as you serve it (easily seen in the picture above.)

Note 8: Nutmeg is also crucial. Enjoy your happy vivid dreams!

Recipe

To make the asam keping water, just add the dried ingredient to some water and boil it for a few minutes. This is one of the places the microwave works great. (If using tamarind, just cover it with boiling water. When it cools down, squish it with your hands and pass through a sieve. Discard the solids.)

Take all the ingredients for the flavoring paste and pound them using a mortar and pestle. First do all the spices and the hard ingredients then all the soft ingredients. (They are listed in the order that you should do them above.)

Don't worry if your mortar gets full. Just empty it into a bowl and mix afterwards.

This pounding will take the better part of 20-30 minutes so patience is required.

(It's harder to pound soft ingredients rather than hard ones since they just squish and slide around rather than get pounded into a paste. Very counter-intuitive but important to know.)

Combine the paste, all the other ingredients including the beef, coconut milk, leaves and spices into a large pan. Stir gently to mix them all. Bring the mixture to a boil and immediately turn the heat down to medium-low.

Let it bubble away stirring every 20 minutes so that the paste and coconut milk do not stick to the bottom and burn.

James Oseland describes the rest vividly:

The meat, coconut milk, and flavoring paste will now go on a fascinating journey. At first, the broth will be thin and gorgeously bright orange^†. As it cooks, the coconut milk will reduce, its fats (as well as the fat the meat renders) separating from the solids. It will be become progressively thicker and darker eventually turning brown.

Keep stirring until the meat becomes rather glossy with a very thick sauce. This will take the better part of anywhere between 3 to 4 hours^‡. The meat should be tender enough to easily poke with a fork. (You may need to add some water from time to time.)

When all the liquid has evaporated, reduce the heat to low and allow the beef to brown in the fat. Stir every 5 minutes because it has a tendency to stick.

The beef should be coffee-colored and barely moist with a glossy sheen.

(As a general rule, there should not be any fat left in the pan but if there is skim it with a spoon and store for later use. It's great for a classic Indonesian dish made with new potatoes!)

Discard the whole lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, daun salan leaves, and cinnamon.

Allow the beef to rest at least 30 minutes before serving. More if you can swing it. It's best served at room temperature (or slightly warm rather than hot) topped with the finely slivered kaffir lime leaves.

---

† from the turmeric.

‡ This may very well be an underestimate. Five hours is not out of the question if the cut of the meat is extremely lean.

Watalappam

This dessert (also frequently transliterated as watalappan) is probably one of the CC's favorites even though the CC is not much of a dessert person to start with!

It's related functionally to the very Spanish flan which is another one of the CC's favorites.

The massive difference between the two is that the Sri Lankan dessert substitutes coconut milk for the cream and milk in the original. This changes the chemistry in a significant way. It also adds a ton of "sweet" spices that flourish on the island. The sugar is substituted by a very specific palm jaggery which adds a smoky flavor and brown color to the product.

Flan is notoriously hard to make. It's very finicky about the percentage of fat in the cream and the milk and the water content. Flubs are common and the act of making it requires real skill.

Almodóvar films an entire flan recipe in his movie Volver. It's both a love ode to the wonderful dessert and a character study in the great tradition of silent films. By eavesdropping on a character who's clearly very talented at making it, and watching her do the thing she loves, we learn more about her than could be inferred from mere dialog.

The chemistry of coconut milk is much simpler than that of cream plus milk. Some genius made the substitution historically and it's a knockout since the proportions in coconut milk are exactly right to get the correct consistency and hence, flubbing is kept to at a minimum.

The jaggery that needs to be used is a palm jaggery called kithul jaggery. It's a little hard to find but it has a characteristic flavor that's hard to reproduce. Regular jaggery simply doesn't have the smoky flavor and it's not sweet enough.

The CC found it in London of all places which led someone to remark, "What does the CC do in London? He buys Sri Lankan jaggery and hauls it back to New York." This has irony written all over it since the CC was in Sri Lanka earlier in the year and didn't haul it back then. However, the bottom line is "Globalization, baby!"

The dessert is traditionally steamed but you can easily make it in an oven with a water bath as long as you have large pans. It also scales effortlessly. Best of all, it needs to be made ahead of time and cooled so you will be able to impress your guests without much effort.

It's just pure magic.



Ingredients

(serves 4)

100 gram kithul jaggery
200 ml coconut milk

2 cloves
1 large stick cinnamon
1 vanilla pod
3 cardamom pods
nutmeg

5 large eggs (read notes!)

Note 1: The jaggery is conveniently sold in 100 gram units wrapped in the dried palm leaves.

Note 2: The amount of milk in a standard can of coconut milk is close to 200 ml. Good enough. This recipe is quite forgiving. Shake it well before opening.

Note 3: The CC has seen pandanus leaves (called rampe in Sinhalese) added to the coconut milk. Great taste if you have some. Can be found frozen and work like a charm.

Note 4: The jaggery is quite hard and tradition calls for shaving it. The CC smashed it with a hammer and used the pieces. It made no difference since it dissolves completely and you will filter the product anyway. Tradition frequently wastes time without asking the obvious questions.

Note 5: If you use regular jaggery, you will need 4-8 tbsp of brown sugar to get the right sweetness.

Note 6: There is no way to predict how many eggs will be needed. Firstly, the coconut milks have different amounts of liquid. Secondly, the eggs are of different sizes even within the same grade. Lastly, the yolks are of different sizes. The CC started with four and then was forced to add one more to get it right. Chances are you might need an extra egg or one less. Start with four and go from there.

Recipe

Remove the cardamom seeds from the pod. Crush the cloves and cardamom in a mortar and pestle.

In a saucepan, heat up the ground cardamom and cloves, vanilla pod, cinnamon and ground nutmeg with the coconut milk and the jaggery. Bring it to a boil and turn down the heat to very low. Stir until everything dissolves and the spices steep into the liquid. Roughly 12-15 minutes. This also has the advantage of removing some of the moisture from the coconut milk.

Taste it. It should be cloyingly sweet and the spices should be prominent. (Don't worry. The final product will be nowhere near as sweet. We still have the eggs, remember?)

Strain the liquid into a bowl and let it cool down to room temperature. (Stick it in a freezer if you're in a hurry.) Discard any spices or solids left behind. Make sure that the mixture is cold otherwise the eggs will scramble when you incorporate them.

Beat the eggs but not too much. Don't incorporate too much air into them.

Strain the egg mixture using a fine sieve into the cold coconut milk liquid above. You will need to use a whisk to get the egg mixture through the sieve.

This step is CRUCIAL. The final product will simply not work without it.

Mix the batter gently to incorporate it completely. It should be slightly dense and thick but still liquid.

Split the mixture evenly into four oven-proof bowls. Cover each of them tightly with aluminum foil.

Now, you have two choices.

Steaming: Steam the four bowls in a steamer for 40 minutes. Check at that mark. They should be jiggly. If not, steam for an extra 5 minutes.

Baking: You're not really baking. You will need a deep pan that can hold the bowls. Preheat the oven to 350°F for 10 minutes. Heat some water in a kettle. Place the bowls in the pan. When the oven is heated, and the water is boiling, pour it in the pan around the bowls. Cover the pan itself with a separate piece of aluminum foil and put it in the oven. Steam for 40 minutes. Check. If not jiggly enough, steam for an additional 5 minutes.

The trick with the water is that all the energy is going into vaporizing the water so that the egg mixture itself never goes above the boiling point of water. Very clever and this clearly scales effortlessly.

Let them cool down to room temperature. Chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve. They are frequently topped with more cashews and raisins but this is a bit of gilding the lily.

Historic Scientificity : The Anti-Farting Gambit

If you look at Indian food, you will notice a preponderance of cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, etc.

Why were these adopted?

The first principle, as always, is basic economics.

They grow abundantly on the Indian sub-continent and hence, they are extraordinarily cheap. So cheap that the Romans used black pepper as ballast on their ships sailing homewards. If all went well, you got a lot of black pepper. If your ship got caught at sea in a storm, you could toss the stuff overboard, and not suffer terribly because it was so cheap.

The second, which is a lot subtler, is that they are all carminative agents (anti-flatulents.) When eaten with lentils, they inhibit the bacteria that line the intestinal walls from generating gassy flatulence.

Obviously, the Indians learnt this by trial and error, and the "technology" has been passed down ever since. Most use this but few understand why.

The most effective are cloves, cinnamon, garlic and asafoetida. The second tier is made up of ginger, turmeric, and black pepper.

There is a related herb in Mexico called epazote which is traditionally added to black beans for the same reason.

Read carefully, and you'll notice that almost all of the "greatest hits" of Indian food are featured. What's missing, of course, is coriander, cumin and cardamom but not everything has to be functional. Some of it is just pure pleasure.

That's why the born-today vegans are basically fucked. They don't understand the functional component of how to make a successful lentil dish. You can't just boil that stuff and call it a day. You need to spice it right to make it both tasteful and functional.

Skill is required in almost every sphere of cooking even if you decide to follow some arbitrary rules, and this skill determines whether you toot through your rear horn all day or not.

Toodles and toots!

The Haul

Could you imagine the CC going to the Spice Coast and not hauling back massive quantities of spices? Didn't think so!

Without further ado, let's just jump into the haul.

black pepper
green pepper
cinnamon
cloves
nutmeg
cardamom
dagad phool
marati moggu
kudampuli
asafoetida
rosematta rice

The asafoetida is the real thing not the stuff diluted with wheat and rice powder that you get in stores!