food+drink

Steaming Beef Curry with Gin

Yesterday I cooked curry. For my birthday. A hot curry. I like hot curry!

If you’ve been following along you’ll know I like my recipes easy, adaptable and forgiving. So here’s my special Steaming Beef Curry with Gin. The gin and the lime give it that extra zing.

[I’ve already posted the method for Noreen’s Very Lemony Rice separately. It makes a great accompaniment to almost any curry.]


I used:

  • Steak; diced
  • 1 large Onion; roughly chopped
  • 4 large cloves garlic; roughly chopped
  • 2 inch piece of fresh ginger; finely chopped
  • 400gm tin Chopped Tomatoes
  • half Cauliflower; in bite-size pieces
  • half jar of Patak’s Vindaloo Paste
  • tablespoon ground Turmeric
  • juice & zest of 2 limes
  • half large wineglass of Gin
  • glass White Wine (or water)
  • small pinch Salt
  • Olive Oil

This what I did:

  1. Sauté the onion, garlic and ginger in some olive oil until the onion is just going translucent.
  2. Then add the diced steak and continue cooking to sear the meat all over.
  3. Slacken the curry paste with the wine (or water) and add this to the pan, stirring to ensure everything is coated in the curry mix.
  4. Add the turmeric and stir that in well.
  5. Now stir in the tomatoes and the smallest pinch of salt.
  6. Followed by the lime juice & zest and the gin; then the cauliflower.
  7. Bring to the bubble and cook for 10-15 minutes.
  8. [If you’re doing Noreen’s Very Lemony Rice to go with this, put the rice on when the curry has been bubbling away nicely for a couple of minutes. This should get the cauliflower just nicely cooked, but not mushy, in time with the rice.]
  9. By the time the cauliflower is done the sauce should be reducing nicely; it should be tick not watery.
  10. Serve with your choice of accompaniments.

Notes:

  1. Despite the big dose of Vindaloo paste this isn’t outrageously hot. (Actually I think Patak’s Vindaloo is milder than their Madras paste.) The heat of curry does seem to me to be ameliorated by the addition of lemon or lime juice. But you could use any strength of curry paste to your liking — or make your own.
  2. Use any (selection of) vegetable of your choice. I happened to have cauliflower to hand.
  3. And of course you could use any meat — or none at all! Yes, I used some steak because I think it is worth using decent meat to make a good curry especially as this doesn’t get cooked to death.
  4. You can use this method for any curry you like. For an “ordinary” version just leave out the gin and lime. The only real essentials are onion, protein, curry paste (or powder) and some liquid.

Picture credit: Fastplaeo