Massaman Curry

Or the best spicy beef stew recipe ever ever. My friends love love love this curry. I got a special request for it for our biggest potluck party of the year. I pointed somebody to this blog and realized that the recipe is actually on my old blog. So I'm re-publishing it with slightly different scale.

The secret to this is very simple - simmering for a loooooonnnggggggg time. There's nothing else to it. I used pre-packaged massaman curry paste, added a lot of other chopped spices and peanuts and then cooked it for about 6 hours. Massaman curry is a little different from all other Thai curries. It requires some dry spices (cinnamon and bay leaves) as opposed to just fresh spices. Massaman is not exactly a Thai word either. I think it came from Muslim-man telling the origin of the recipe.

Regardless, it's a wonderful and hearty dish to serve in a cold weather.



Ingredients

• 5 pounds of any flavorful cut of beef - cubed (I used sirloin tips because they were on sale - but chucks would be fine too.)


• 3 pounds of potatoes - peeled and quartered and then soaked in cold water so that they don't turn brown


• 1/2 cup of ginger - peeled - chopped


• 1 head garlic - peeled and chopped *


• 15 shallots - peeled - chop 5 and leave the rest whole *


• 3 stalks of lemongrass - discard outer layers and both tips and chopped *


• 2 tablespoons of galangal - chopped *


• 2 cinnamon sticks


• 5 bay leaves


• 1 cup of massaman curry paste


• 2 cans coconut milk


• 1/2 cup chopped peanuts


• 2 tablespoon red pepper flakes


• 1 cup tamarind juice (I soaked about half a cup of packaged tamarind in a cup of water. This makes the curry a little tangy.)


• 1 tablespoon cooking oil


• 2 tablespoon brown sugar


• Fish sauce - to taste

Directions

1. Marinate the beef in a can of coconut milk, 1/4 cup of chopped ginger and about 2 tablespoons of fish sauce for 30 minutes.


2. Cook the marinated meat on medium heat for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally.


3. In a different pot - preferably the larger one, fry massaman curry paste with the rest of chopped spices in oil for 1 minute. Stir vigorously and try not to burn the curry. Add a can of coconut milk. Reduce the heat to medium.


4. Combine meat into the curry pot. Once the content is a little bubble, reduce heat to very low. Add potatoes, whole shallots, peanuts, bay leaves and cinnamon sticks. Season to taste with sugar, red pepper flakes, tamarind juice and fish sauce.


5. Let simmer for a few hours or until the meat is tender.

* I processed all the spices other than ginger together in my food processor. It saved me a lot of time and tears.