Cooking and Baking Laboratory: beef

Showing posts with label beef. Show all posts

January 15, 2009

Rawon

This is another Indonesian traditional food. This dish come from Surabaya, East Java, cook with special spice, which is keluwek or keluwak. Keluwek or keluwak is fruit from Kepayang tree. How to choose good Keluwak? Some people just shake the fruit and get two voices inside. But it doesn’t enough for me. I choose the heavier one, ‘antep’ in Javanese language. The larger is not always the heavier. When you do the right choice, you’ll get a perfect color of black keluwak inside the nut shell and its great smell. I can’t describe the smell but it is just like fermented fruits, you will get the smell of alcohol a little when the nut shell is cracked.

Actually, Rawon was my first experiment .Having capability to cook Rawon with good taste is a must for me, because this is one of my favorite foods. Rawon was my first experiment a couple years ago. This recipe is made after several tries.

Ingredients:
700 g beef (brisket, sandunglamur in Bahasa Indonesia), cut in cubical shape
2 L water
2 lemongrass, crushed
2 salam leaves
4 jeruk purut leaves
2 thick slices of galangal root, crushed
3 tablespoons cooking oil
7 teaspoon salt

Spices to Grind:
4 chilies, throw the seeds away
5 cloves garlic, peeled
7 shallots, peeled
1 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
7 keluwak/keluwek, cracked, use only the black inner
5 candlenut
2 teaspoon ground coriander
A pinch of tamarind
50 g palm sugar
2 tablespoons sugar

Complements:
150 g sprouts (the short one), soaked in hot water, then drained
2 tablespoon fried onion
Lime juice
Leek, chopped
Chili condiment
Salted eggs (duck egg), cut in two

Instructions:
Boil the water in a pan in high heat.
Set heat in low, add the beef, lemongrass, salam leaves, galangal root and Jeruk Purut leaves.
While tendering the meat in the pan, grind all spices in Spices to Grind above with stone mortar or processor.
Set the heat in medium. Sauté the ground spices with cooking oil until it is fragrant.
Then, pour the spices to the pan, stir it. Add salt.
Keep stewing until the meat is tender and the spices well absorbed.
Serve Rawon with warm rice and The Complements.

(for 4 peoples)

November 6, 2008

Fried Rice with Lemongrass, Fast Food Homemade

One day, the rain was falling so hard and I found my food storage box (the refrigerator) was empty. Not really empty actually. There were a tomato, frozen mixed vegetables (carrots, sweet corns, green beans), and a wrapped frozen minced beef. I was confused thinking what I have to serve for dinner. I just couldn’t go out and do some shopping in that hard rainy day. Call delivery order for food, no..no..I just couldn’t feel appetizing when thinking of some fast food or traditional food I could order at that time.

I just got stuck in the kitchen and didn’t know what to do until my hands did it :D

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked rice
2 cloves garlic, peeled, chopped
3 chilies, diced
1 cup frozen mixed vegetables, set in room temperature
½ cup minced beef
2 lemongrasses, crushed
1 teaspoon salt
A pinch of sugar
2 teaspoons sweet soy sauce
A tomato, sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil or cooking oil

Instructions:

In high heat, sauté chopped garlic, crushed lemongrasses and diced chilies with a tablespoon olive oil until fragrant.
Add minced beef. Add a tablespoon olive oil. Stir until the red beef turn into brown color.
Add mixed vegetables. Stir it.
Add cooked rice. Stir well.
Add salt, sugar, soy sauce, and ... a little bit fish sauce to enhance the taste.
Stir well.
Turn the heat off. Finish.
Serve with sliced tomato.

(for 2 peoples)

Hmm, and about the picture, I’m not satisfied with this, lack of light and blur. I’ve tried my best to get good picture, yeah..but unfortunately this only I’ve got in that night.

October 29, 2008

Soto Betawi (Batavian Beef Soup)

This is one of my favorite Soto. I really enjoy its taste. Yes, certainly it comes from Betawi, so it is named Soto Betawi. But, where Betawi actually is? Betawi or Batavia is the old name of Jakarta, The Capital City of Indonesia.

Coconut milk and cow’s milk in its gravy is unique to this Soto. Other Soto never put milk in its gravy. Besides that, Soto Betawi uses various spices to build its taste. The origin recipe uses cow’s innards such as intestines, livers, and lungs. For health reason, I choose not to use cow’s innards. And for simplicity, I also choose not to use cow’s milk. However, it is all up to you, prefer to the origin or the modification..:)

Ingredients:

500 g beef, sliced in cube formed
½ nutmeg, grated
4 cloves
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 Jeruk Purut leaves
2 teaspoons salt
250 ml coconut milk from ½ coconut fruit
1500 ml water for boiling
1 tablespoon cooking oil

Ground Spices:

4 cm ginger
3 cloves garlic
8 shallots
1 teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon ground white pepper
A pinch of ground caraway
A pinch of sugar
Grind them all with stone mortar or processor

Complements:

1 tomato, sliced
2 leek, chopped
3 celery leaves, chopped
4 tablespoon fried onion
Lemon juice
Sweet soy sauce
Bitter nut crackers
Condiment
Cucumber and Carrot Acar

Instructions:

Set the high heat, boil the water in the pan
While the water already boiled, set to medium heat, put the beef into it, keep boiling
Add nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, salt, and Jeruk Purut leaves
Keep boiling until the meat is mild enough, then set into lower heat

Sauté the ground spices until fragrant, low the heat
Then pour coconut milk into it, stir, turn off the heat

Pour that spiced coconut milk above into boiling pan, stir until well cooked, then ready to serve with all the complements

(for 6 peoples)

October 27, 2008

Rendang (Beef in Chili and Coconut Milk)

Rendang is an Indonesian beef stew dish with coconut milk and very complicated spices. I make it simpler and easier. Actually, this recipe below is adapted from my mother recipe. So that, my Rendang (I am sure) is different than Rendang from Padang (A city in West Sumatera- Indonesia where Minangkabau community come from, which has the origin of this recipe). Rendang (as I wrote before) usually serve with ketupat and other dishes in Hari Raya (Iedul Fitri Celebration Day). However, if you just eat it with warm cooked rice it would be very nice too.

Ingredients:

1 kg beef, sliced into 10-15 chunk, in the same direction with its fiber
3 jeruk purut leaves
1 lemongrass, crushed
2 salam leaves
500 ml thick coconut milk from 4 coconuts
2 turmeric leaves (my mother used it, but I didn’t)
5 ml cooking oil (I replaced it with olive oil)

Ground Spices:

10 chilies, or as necessary (depend on you like hot or not)
4 cloves of garlic
7 shallots
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
2 pieces galangal root (2 cm per piece)
2 pieces ginger (2 cm per piece)
1 tablespoon salt, or as what you think necessary
1 teaspoon white sugar, or as what you think necessary
1 tablespoon palm sugar, or as what you think necessary

Instructions:

Grind all spices in Ground Spices above with stone mortar or processor
Set the heat in medium
Sauté the ground spices with cooking oil, add lemongrass, salam leaves, jeruk purut leaves, and turmeric leaves if you use it. Sauté them together until it is fragrant
Then, add the beef, sauté until the red color of beef turns into brown
Set the heat in low
Add the coconut milk, stir well
Boil about 1 hour or until the beef are mild enough or turn into dark brown color
Don’t forget to stir it well occasionally
If it runs dry meanwhile the beef are still hard to chew (use fork to make sure), you can just add the boiled water into it and do the same process again

Refrigerate it, if you want to keep this dish for any longer use for 1 week or more. When you need to serve a meal, you can simply warm it.

October 5, 2008

Sambal Goreng Hati (Beef Liver in Chili and Coconut Milk) ala Diana Novita

Ingredients:

400 g beef liver, boiled, cut into cube shape, fried
250 g potatoes, peeled, cut into cube shape, fried
10 g peas
2 salam leaves
Galangal root, crushed
2 tablespoon cooking oil to sauté spices (grind)
250 ml cooking oil to fry potatoes and beef liver
400 ml light/thin coconut milk

Spices (Grind):

8 chilies, halved, seeded
3 cloves garlic, peeled
8 shallots, peeled
One or two pinch of terasi (shrimp paste)
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar

Instructions:

Grind chilies, garlic, shallots, salt, sugar, and shrimp paste with stone mortar or processor
Sauté that ground spices with salam leaves and galangal root
Pour the coconut milk, stir it and boil it
Add the fried beef liver, stir
Add the fried potatoes, stir
At last add peas into it, stir until it becomes a little bit drained

Adapted from my mother’s, Ibu Djoko Sutrisno’s, recipe