Meat – Page 6 – The Occasional Cook

Daging Briyani (beef Briyani)

January 5, 2014March 3, 2021 7shasha7

To go with my pilau rice, I decided to make a beef dish, something like those meat dishes I love so much at Malay weddings.

I followed a recipe from one of the many recipe books I have, but true to my own laziness, did not follow exactly. For example, the recipe called for onion paste but I was too lazy to grind onions. Then there was ‘5 green chillies’. When I opened my fridge, I saw exactly 5 red chillies (which was needed in the recipe) but no green chillies.

But in the end, my resulting dish was still amazingly a resounding success. Not to blow my own trumpet here but I received the most sincere compliment from MY MOTHER. Well, as any Asian girl will jolly well know, NOTHING and I mean absolutely NOTHING can be please an Asian mother.

But a few days after I’ve given the some of the meat dish to her, I returned to my cubicle, saw a message on whatsapp and read my mother’s message in disbelief. The day after I cooked this dish, I brought some to work and my colleagues praised me. It wasn’t the usual polite praise of thanks.

Well, my point here is after many years of cooking and experimenting in the kitchen, I have now in a way understood the art of cooking without having to look at a recipe and following precise measurements. I can use my gut feeling and go by sight, taste and some understanding of how ingredients work. In other words, I have become a real ASIAN MOTHER myself. 🙂 🙂

My beef dish recipe

In a wok add some ghee and olive oil, and then cardamoms, cloves, cinnamon stick and stir fry thinly sliced onions until slightly yellow.
Add finely chopped fresh chillies, garlic mince or paste, fresh diced tomatoes and a smashed lemon grass. (If I had the onion paste, I’d have put it in as well).
Add beef cubes which have been boiled with water till almost soft.
Then stir in half a can or a small can of tomato paste (I like to use gilda brand).
Stir in 4 heaped tablespoons of meat curry powder (I like to use Baba’s brand).
Add the water from the boiled beef. Cover the wok.
After about 20 minutes, uncover the wok and let it simmer till the liquid has reduced and thickened to a gravy like consistency.
Stir salt in.
Once beef is fork tender and the seasoning is perfect (oh when I tasted line it was a tad too acidic for me as I had added too much tomato paste so I balanced that with some brown sugar), switch the heat off.
To serve, sprinkle toasted almond slivers, raisins and coriander leaves. And, crispy fried shallots. 🙂 try this one day! Super satisfying.

Meat

Perfectly cooked grilled lamb chops

December 20, 2013December 20, 2013 7shasha7

Lamb chops play along… Each time I cook lamb chops I’ll have this tune playing in my head.

I just learnt from a friend how to cook perfect lamb chops. Apparently it’s only between 2 and 3 minutes per side. The Little Girl learnt too and insisted on marinating and grilling the lamb chops one day for dinner. We used Old Bay spices and salt. Oh, and a bit of olive oil.

We grilled each side for 2.5 minutes and left them to rest before eating. Delicious! Perfectly pink and juicy on the inside.

Meat, Middle Eastern/Turkish, Soups

Harira

May 20, 2012March 3, 2021 7shasha7

I wished I had discovered this soup earlier. This is such a tasty, lovely, tomato-ey soup which everyone I served that day slurped it up dry.

On Mothers’ Day, I invited my family over and made harira, moussaka, a salad and tiramisu for lunch.

This harira recipe I got off the internet and they are basically the same ingredients: blended onions, lots of finely chopped fresh coriander and parsley, paprika (I used smoked), black pepper, powdered ginger, black pepper, salt, tomato sauce (a bottle of passata works perfectly), tomato paste/puree, meat cubes (I used brisket), lentils, chickpeas, vermicelli, water, and a mixture of flour and water paste to thicken.

My version that day was without the chickpeas and I made my soup slightly thicker so that they could dunk it with toasted bread. This is a Moroccan dish, one of their national dishes I think, and I have influenced at least two colleagues to cook this dish, one of whom made it two days consecutively for dinner.

IMG02970-20120512-1310 — Harira Soup in the tureen

IMG02974-20120512-1325 — The Mothers’ Day spread. Mommy brought beautifully baked salmon and dill rice. I forgot to place the salad plate for the table but it had beautiful yellow, orange and red baby capsicums.

Asian Dishes, Meat, Sides

Epok-epok

March 11, 2012March 11, 2012 7shasha7

Malay curry puffs. epok-epok. Karipap. Whatever the name is, I don’t know any Singaporean who does not like this. I love curry puffs. Then one night (yes, night), I was suddenly awoken from my slumber and could not fall back to sleep. Oh, it wasn’t night though it was very dark for sure. I looked at my watch and saw that it was oh, only two in the morning? So I got out from bed and surfed the net on my portable ipad. And then I decided, what the hey, let’s just go try make some curry puffs. And make them I did. I only had tuna available so I used that for my filling, adding in some green chillies and sriracha (Vietnamese American chilli sauce). It worked! I mean, even though it was five a.m. when I completed the whole thing, I felt amazed that my maiden attempt at making this difficult (in my mind, it was) snack was a success. I brought a few to work and gave some to my mom. The comment was generally positive except that it was rather dry.

The next night, I decided to make again! Even though it was still a school day. This time round, I made sure I added more butter. My recipe called for 4 cups of flour (this will yield plenty plenty of curry puffs), 6 tbsp of margarine (I used olive margarine, but next time, I’ll use the cheaper Planta) and roughly a small IKEA kids plastic glass of ice cold salted water. I used the processor to whiz my flour with the fat and then transfer it to a big bowl and proceeded to add in the cold water to the mixture until a dough is formed. Make sure you don’t add a lot of water.

For the filling, I used minced beef and potatoes, seasoned very simply with powdered cumin and powdered coriander. Next time, I’ll add fresh coriander. And then, because I had years of making curry puff using plasticine as a child, I had no problems making the pretty curls at the end of the puff. What do you call them? The frying is terribly slow. You cant fry them in high heat or you’ll end up with burnt dough. So it takes 20 minutes for a batch to be cooked. However, this second attempt was way much better.

IMG02764-20120308-2018 — Make the filling first.

IMG02765-20120308-2308 — When the dough is ready, pull of small pieces and make them into rounds. You'll end up with plenty of balls of dough. Take one of the balled doughs and flatten with your palm hard. And then using a rolling pin (a light one) roll it as thinly as you can. Using a round cutter (I used a glass) cut into it to get a circular dough. Using the pin again, roll till really flat, and then add filling. Fold in half, and seal tightly. And then crimple the edge with a fork or like what you see above. It's hard to explain.

IMG02768-20120309-0606 — Fry gently till cooked. Your curry puffs will surely be crispy. Remember to use fridge cold water when making the dough.

Bread and Batter, Meat, Western

Cheeseburger

October 22, 2011March 3, 2021 7shasha7

I just had this two minutes ago. Yummy. And cheap. If you think about it, one packet of ground beef costs about $5 plus a packet of burger buns (four inside) costs about $2. Cheese is what? A few cents. Let’s say everything is about $8 and you can make about 5 patties; why, that’s about $2 per burger! And, you get a super thick burger meat for that instead of that paper thin burger meat they try to pass off at fast food outlets.

I’ve watched Diners Drive-Ins and Dives plenty of times and one thing I noticed is that the diners in America only season their meat with salt and pepper. Nothing more. It’s the other extra stuff that makes a burger good.

So this is what I made for our family dinner: