Lovely Leftovers

I'm a big fan of using up leftover food and a Sunday roast is usually a good source of leftover goodies.

For me, yesterday was no exception and my roast beef yielded not only a batch of broccoli stalks which are great for broccoli soup (diced and frozen until needed) but a nice chunk of beef just crying out to be turned into a cheeky curry.

This recipe works just as well with lamb and if I'm going to take the time (4 hours or so) to cook lamb shanks, I always do one more than I need, just for a Monday night curry.

Anyway, back to the recipe.

Soften one thinly sliced onion in a little vegetable oil along with a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, four cardamoms and cloves, salt, pepper and a teaspoon each of cumin, ground coriander, turmeric and crushed chilli flakes.

While that's all softening, cut the beef into bite-sized chunks.

Add the beef to the pan and give it a good stir to coat the meat with the spice mixture. Leave that to cook for a few minutes while you get a pint of hot chicken stock ready (if I don't have any fresh or frozen stock I use Knorr Touch of Taste concentrate).

Add the stock to the pan along with a carton of passata and stir well.

Bring it to the boil then reduce the heat, cover and simmer for at least 2 hours.

Serve it up with some pilau rice. I thought I'd previously covered pilau rice on another post but a quick trawl through the Bloke archives confirms otherwise.

Ok, bring a large pan of water to the boil and add a good pinch of salt, pepper, saffron, turmeric and onion seeds (these are the little black seeds you see in naan bread and they're available from supermarkets).

When it's boiling, add a mug of rice (I always use basmati but that's just my preference), stir well and boil for around 10 minutes.

I tend to regard cooking times on rice packets with a degree of scepticism. I've seen some instructions say 15 minutes or more. If you want wallpaper paste then go right ahead. But I digress. Try a bit of rice after about 9 minutes and make your own mind up.

When the rice is cooked, drain into a colander, put the colander back over the pan (not over heat) and cover it with foil. Leave it for around 10 minutes. This will leave the rice nice and fluffy.

Serve the curry and rice with a few bottles of ice-cold beer or, as I did last night, a big, meaty Cabernet Sauvignon.

Enjoy!

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