Korean Grilled Beef

I made this for the photo with just a small amount of beef. If I were using the full 500 grams, I would be tempted to double the marinade to make sure the beef was well coated.

The recipe calls for ‘Chinese’ cooking sherry, but strangely I could only find Japanese cooking wine in the supermarket. It also provides a recipe for a dipping sauce, but I found that it was totally unnecessary. With a good coating of the marinade, the beef is quite delicious without the sauce. If you can’t find pickled garlic to use the juice, then just plain vinegar will probably do.

The recipe calls for the white sesame seeds to be roasted. To do this, just spread the seeds out in a hot dry skillet. Shake the pan once or twice to turn the seeds. They will brown in a few seconds.

(4 Servings)

Ingredients

Dipping Sauce

Preparation Method

• Mix all of the main ingredients except the beef together in a bowl.
• Add the beef to the mix and make sure it gets coated well. Marinate the beef in the sauce for at least one hour in the refrigerator.
• If you want to use the dipping sauce, prepare it while the beef marinates. Put the garlic juice, sugar and salt in a bowl and stir together. Microwave the mixture until it comes to a boil. Remove it from the oven and stir in the rest of the ingredients.
• Remove the marinated beef from the refrigerator and cook it on a grill, or hot skillet. It will cook very quickly if sliced thin.
• The beef can be served with the dipping sauce and some steamed vegetables, such as asparagus, whole baby corn and carrot sticks.

This is one of the few Thai dishes that’s most often made with beef rather than pork. That, and the fiery spiciness points to southern origins. While beef is the most common meat, it can be made with pork or chicken.

Jungle Curry made with beef

Due to its ‘extreme’ nature, jungle curry is not as common as many other dishes on the Thai menu, but it’s still relatively easy to find. Recipes for jungle curry also vary widely. Some variations use coconut milk and can be quite thick, but most cooks use water or stock to make the soup. Traditional recipes use Thai aubergines and pea aubergines for the vegetable, but I think the corn and long beans ‘sweeten’ the dish slightly, making it more palpable to western tastes.

This particular recipe, translated from a Thai source, also calls for pumpkin. As I’ve noted in the article on pumpkin, Thais don’t follow any ‘rules’ that say a food is strictly for dessert, etc. You’ll find pumpkin used in all sorts of main courses. In this dish, it gives a nice cooling counterpoint to the spiciness of the curry.

You might also see in the photograph that I used regular green beans instead of long beans. This was mainly because I had some in the ‘fridge and they work just as well. The taste is almost the same.

(4 Servings)

Ingredients

Curry Paste

Preparation Method

• Grind together the curry paste ingredients in a mortar and pestle to form a smooth paste.
• Clean and peel the pumpkin, then cut into small cubes.
• Heat the vegetable oil in a wok, add the prepared curry paste and stir fry until fragrant.
• Toss in the sliced beef and stir fry until cooked through.
• Add water to cover the beef, then add the pumpkin. When the water comes to a boil, season to taste with fish sauce and sugar.
• Add the baby corn and long beans. When the liquid returns to the boil, add the holy basil leaves and shredded spur chili. Remove from heat.

Stir-fried Pork with Chili

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Heat a wok over high flame and add the vegetable oil. When hot, add the garlic and stir-fry until its fragrance is released.
• Add the pork and stir-fry until it browns. Add the chillies and onion. Stir just to mix, then season with the fish sauce and sugar.

This can be quite a mild dish. I like to add a little cracked pepper to spice it up a bit more.
 

There is another theory that mussaman curry originated in southern Thailand, where it may have been based on dishes introduced by Arab traders. Since this curry is one of the few well know Thai dishes that uses beef rather than pork, it seems possible that the name mussaman is a corruption of ‘Muslim.’

Mussaman curry is one of the most complex of all Thai curries. It uses many more ingredients than most curries, and also takes more time to prepare than almost any other dish. The extra time is largely due to the use of potatoes, although a ‘long time’ to prepare a Thai dish is 20 minutes or more, compared to most other curries that require 10 minutes at most.

Mussman Curry with Chicken

Mussaman Curry Paste

First, you have to make the curry paste.

Ingredients

To prepare the curry paste, grind together the dried chillies, coriander seeds, fennel, cloves, cinnamon stick, cardamom seeds, shallots, garlic, galangal and lemongrass to form a fine paste. Add the roasted peanuts and grind them into the paste.

Mussaman Curry Recipe

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

Preparation Method

Heat the coconut cream in a large pot to simmering. Stir in the prepared curry paste and continue to simmer until the fragrance is released. Add five tablespoons of fish sauce, five tablespoons of the tamarind juice and two tablespoons of the granulated sugar. Mix well until the fragrance returns, then add one tablespoon of the palm sugar.

Heat the coconut milk along with the meat in a pot. When it begins to simmer, pour in the coconut cream mixture along with the remainder of the seasonings.

Add the new potatoes and test the taste. Add more tamarind juice to make it more sour, or additional salt if needed.

When the potatoes are nearly done, add the onions, shallots, peanuts, cardamom leaves and cardamom seeds. Remove from heat.