The Healthy Vegan Kitchen

 It’s time for our 5^th challenge with Recipes to Rival. This is a dish that I have never had, or heard of for that matter, & that is really what these challenges are all about. This months challenge is an Indonesian dish called Beef Rendang! As our host puts it: “This extravagantly rich, dry-braised beef curry is a signature dish of the Minangkabau highlands of West Sumatra, Indonesia. It’s a triumph of flavor, with lime leaves, nutmeg, & cloves. The dish is cooked by a process that inverts normal braising. The beef is slowly simmered in a spiced coconut-milk broth until the broth evaporates & the meat is left to sauté in the intensely flavored rendered coconut & beef oils left in the pot.”

I was planning on substituting some tempeh for the beef, but Rayrena (our wonderful host) also provided a vegan version made from potatoes, so that is the way I went. I had to make a couple of substitutions because I couldn’t find ingredients, but she has those stated in the recipe as well. I had seen lemon grass, which is in the recipe, in the stores all summer, but it is now gone. Well, I decided to look at World Market to see if they had some of the other spices & I found ground lemon grass in the spice section, yeah! One down, 3 more to go. Well, I never did find whole turmeric, but I did have ground turmeric, so I used that, 2 more to go. The next one was duan salam but was able to sub in bay leaves and the last one was galangal which is a Siamese ginger which was optional. Now, in the beef dish, it also calls for kaffir lime leaves as well as some cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. Well, they weren’t in the potato dish, so I didn’t have to try to find the kaffir lime (which was also in my grocery store for about 2 weeks back in June).

This dish is mainly a hands off dish. There is about 20-30 minutes of prep work, then the rest is the occasional stirring while painfully having to wait through a couple hours of amazing smelling cooking! The first whiff of the dish gets your tastebuds going, hardly able to contain themselves to take a bite. The hardest time to wait is once it has finished cooking & you have to wait for 30 minutes as it cools a bit and the flavors deepen even more.

The verdict: This dish was really good! I would definitely make this again. I served this over some brown rice with a salad on the side. Adding the smell of cooking brown rice just added to the agony of waiting (okay, so it wasn’t that bad, luckily I started making this right after we had lunch). You really do need 4 to 5 hours of cooking time, so make sure you have the time to give this dish to cooking.  One more thing.  Be careful which peppers you use & how many you use.  I used only 5 peppers that were labeled hot peppers (from Costco) & oh my goodness!!!  I had to add some soy sour cream to mine because it was so spicy.  Hubby loved the flavor, but could only eat about half before he decided to eat the leftover pizza.  I think if I had only added 3 of the peppers, it would’ve been perfect!

Much thanks to our hosts this month for such a great dish: Rayrena & Belita. 
  cooking down more after adding potatoes

  halfway through cooking

  ready to eat

Here is where you can get the recipe: http://recipestorival.blogspot.com/2008/10/beef-rendang.html

Check out everyone’s efforts here: http://recipestorival.blogspot.com/

Even if you are nervous about the amount of coconut flavor, don’t worry, its not near as strong as you think it will be. This is a tasty dish.

  served with brown rice and a side salad

  Yummy dinner (although a little spicy)

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 1st, 2008 at 12:07 am and is filed under potaotes, Recipes to Rival, Dinner, Challenges. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.