Beef Rendang

Monday was our first night back after the ACC Tournament and thankfully, I got home at a decent hour to get some grocery shopping done. I found this recipe a while ago and thought I would try it.

Beef Rendang

Adam and I love Thai food and while the flavors (and color) may trick you into thinking its Indian, the addition of coconut milk helps mitigate the flavors so that it ends up being mild-to-medium heat.

This time I took a couple pictures of my "prep" so I could show you a few things that I find invaluable.

While not necessarily pretty to look at, a garbage bowl is a must!  Or in my case, a paper plate with a Kroger plastic bag on top - located right next to my prep area so I can easily skin onions, throw away egg shells, trim fat off of meat, etc., etc.  Then when you are done, its one trip to the trashcan and voila, you have a clean (or mostly-clean) work surface and you didn't trek your butt all over the kitchen to throw away items one-by-one!

Next are two items that yes, you can do without but I wouldn't encourage it.  A good santoku knife and long, thin measuring spoons.

The santoku knife is our favorite for many reasons.  Adam loves the balanced weight of it in his hand when he chops, and I'm more partial to the practical bits - the curved head so I can rest my non-chopping hand there for leverage and the ridges in the blade that make it really easy for vegetables to remain on the cutting board while prepping.

The long measuring spoons are obvious and are so incredibly good when measuring out spices.  Now you can easily get the spoon into the glass jar without having to pour the spices out all over the place to measure them out.

Finally, while Adam and I have a great set of cookware, we find ourselves using these two cheap pots a lot.

The first is a really flimsy pot that we really only cook rice in.  It works the best because the top is so thin, you can literally feel the water boil when you put your hand on top, and you can decide if you want the heat to go up or down depending on how fast your simmer is.  I've never failed when using the hand-on-the-top trick when cooking rice in this cheapo pot!

The next pot is one that Adam "inherited" from someone at college and we literally use it every night.  Think Dutch Oven without cover-meets-high-walled sauté pan.  Thankfully when a dish needs to be covered, one of our calphalon lids does the trick.

Overall, the meal was great.  It does take quite a bit of prep work and if you have a good bottle of wine and some great music, you won't mind doing the work!  I followed the directions to a T and while I did omit the lemongrass (not on purpose - just couldn't find it at the grocery store), it still tasted quite yummy!  As Adam would say, "This one's a keeper!"