Notes on a Rendang

A life is but half-lived until you have cooked and consumed an Indonesian rendang daging curry. I kid you not.

The first time I ate an authentic rendang was at a good friend's house after she had returned from living in Indonesia. I can still recall my toes curling with delight at the first mouthful. Not long after that I borrowed a copy of the source of the recipe - Charmaine Soloman's The Complete Asian Cookbook. What a cookbook - a veritable treatise on Asian cookery. If I had a parallel life to live I would cook a recipe from this book every day until I die - in fact I may still do it.

You'll be pleased to know that after a wee bit of chop and prep, the rendang is simplicity itself to cook. Try to cook it the day before or even better, two days before to get maximum flavour. Serve it with something simple and green along with a great mound of basmati rice. There will be no looking back.

Charmaine's Rendang along with Nan's asides

Ingredients

1.5 kg chuck steak (or any beef requiring a long slow cook)
2 onions - largish & chopped roughly
6 cloves of garlic (at least)
1 tablespoon of chopped fresh ginger (doesn't have to be chopped finely as you're chucking it in the blender)
6 fresh, red chillies, seeded (if you like a medium to hot curry, you could easily make it 10-12 - trust me, I'm a complete nancy when it comes to chillies and 6 is pretty tame even to my mild palette)
2 cups thick coconut milk (I use coconut cream)
1&1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
3 teaspoons chilli powder (I prefer to ditch the powder and ramp up the fresh chillies)
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 daun salam or 6 curry leaves (I wouldn't know a daun salam if I fell over it so I stick with the curry leaves.)
1 stem of fresh lemon grass or 3 strips  of thinly-peeled lemon rind
1/2 cup tamarind paste
2 teaspoons of sugar

How To

Cut beef into strips about 2.5 by 5 cm. Put onion, garlic, ginger and chillies in blender container with half a cup of coconut cream (I put in more because of my no guts/no glory blender). Cover and blend until smooth. Pour into a saucepan with a very big bottom and use the rest of the coconut cream  to catch the dregs from the blender. Add this to the saucepan with the rest of the ingredients except for the sugar and tamarind. Mix everything up nicely,  pop the meat in and bring it all to the boil.  Reduce the heat to medium, chuck in the tamarind paste and cook uncovered, giving it an occasional stir until a gravy has formed. At this stage the contents of the saucepan will look like a dog's breakfast and you may be having doubts. Pour yourself a velvety glass of merlot and put on some good music - all will come to pass.
Now you have some gravy action turn the heat down a bit, somewhere between low & medium heat and kick back with your wine, remembering to give the pot an occasional stir. Now's also the time to go and bring in the washing or put out the garbage just so that you can have the pleasure of coming back in to your fragrant kitchen. Why not break out the cooking chocolate for an extra little pat on the back?
Keep cooking until the sauce has almost disappeared into the meat giving an occasional vigorous stir. Now, Charmaine says that after about 2&1/2 hours of cooking time the oil should start to separate from the gravy. It may have something to do with my cooktop but I am nowhere near this point at 2&1/2 hours. In fact mine takes probably a good six hours before the pan begins to dry and the oil separates. You be the judge. At this point you should put in the sugar and give it a jolly good stir. Let it fry until the meat becomes a rich dark brown.
Serve.

Incidentally I finally picked up my own copy of the book recently at a garage sale. Like all old books, it fell open to the previous owner's favourite page - the rendang, of course!

PS Scenes from a weekend, including the rendang.

Comments

[diana]

Hmm, curry the hotter the better in my book. Thanks for the recipe. I've cooked many of Charmaine's recipes and they always turn out a treat.

[Sarah]

Thanks for the rendang recipe - I actually have that Charmaine Solomon book and have not actually made this, so I will now on your recommendation. Thanks!

[katiecrackernuts]

Sounds devine. I am not an eater of red meat. Do you think it would work with chicken thighs? I might have a go anyway. Sounds so yummo.

[Jackie]

Ah, the rendang. I only made it after you recommended but OD'd by making it about four times in a month. Maybe time to revisit.
For new players - it doesn't look like the sauce is going to be right until the very end, don't despair - though Nan I thought the 2 1/2 hours was pretty much on the money.
Good luck with the move and look forward to seeing you in July! xx

[Zelia]

looks like you had fun!

[Nurkemala Muliani]

OMG! Talk about a favorite dish of mine!

Daun Salam = Bay leaves
The West Sumatrans, where Rendang is originally from, usually cook them for two straight days, but 8 to 10 hours sounds decent enough for me. The key is in keep stirring and simmering the coconut milk.

You aren't moving out of Canberra, are you? Otherwise I might invite you over for a proper rendang and other Indonesian dishes meal in Scullin. :D :D

Cheers.

[sal]

hi darling nan, such sychronicity cos i was thinking about you today, and then you rang me. i have been cooking that charmaine soloman rendang since i was about 23. i dragged that book (heavy as it is) around the world and sought out bloody tamarind in countries such as denmark in 1985. i had to go to the red light district to find tamarinds and couldn't get the paste so had to cook and sieve them. it is the ONLY really mucky page in the whole book as it was the absolute favourite. by the time we got to singapore the book was looking decidedly shabby so i got it rebound in leather...so now you will have to cook it for me when i get to canberra. which i will do soon as, though i am a dreadful friend, i am going to get a whole lot better from now on. what a fascinator you were to live on swingers' hill...but please send me your new address. i am quite good at licking stamps. love sal xxx

[alivicwil]

I'm always on the look out for curry recipes :)

thank you!!

(I found your blog via Canberra's Got Style. [I'm in Qbn.] It's lovely!)