Rendang for Both Vegetarians and Carnivores

Yummy Rendang Recipe\Diary Entry

Today (5\3\2013) my mum taught how to make rendang. 

 But, before I tell you how to make it, you have to know what it is: it is a slow cooked curry\stew (about 4-3hrs),  a

"traditional dish of West Sumatra. It was probably developed out of the need to preserve the meat from a newly killed buffalo for as long as possible in a tropical climate with no refrigerators.

The meat was cut into chunky cubes, then boiled in large pots, not in water, but in spiced coconut milk, which slowly penetrated the meat and incidentally gave it a delicious flavour.

 Rendang is traditionally eaten with sticky rice cooked in coconut milk, or with lemang, the same sticky rice but cooked in a bamboo segment. It is just as good, however, with plain boiled rice."

Of course you don't need to use buffalo! Instead use cow or chicken (which cooks faster) and if your a vegetarian use jack fruit.

Serves 2-3

Ingredients:

1. 500g beef, two *chicken breasts, or two cans green of **jack fruit.
2.  Twelve shallots
3. Two onions
4. 2inches\4cm Galanggal
5. 1inch\2cm Ginger
6.  Three stems lemon grass
7. Two cloves of garlic
8.  Tons of coconut cream/milk
9.  A teaspoon and a half of brown sugar
10.  Something sour \ lemon \ tamarind (asam jawa) or asam keping
11. Mums version has a ton of red chillies
12.  Salt according taste

How:

First cut up the shallots and onions to a fair size then blender-ise them along with the red chilies, garlic, galanggal and ginger. Then place the all the things that you had put in the blender, in a wok along with enough oil to cover the contents and more. Wash the meat or chicken or drain the jack fruit. Cut the meat roughly into cubes and add them along with the the rest of the ingredients and salt. Alternate in between reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and stirring the rendang for 3-4hrs. The meat fries in the coconut cream while everything is evaporated.

Serve hot with warm rice... Enjoy

*This cooks faster

**For the vegetarians