Beef Curry

Curry beef is a traditional Malaysian dish.There is a large population of ethnic Chinese living in Malaysia.When this dish introduced to mainland China, an idea came from tranforming a traditional Malaysian dish which evolved into a popular Cantonese favourite.

Ingredients (Serves 5)

• 250g topside of beef or steak
• 2 medium size potatoes
• 2 tablespoons of frozen peas (defrosted)
• A quarter each of green and red pepper

Seasoning

• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 beef stock cube
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Sauce

• 1 tablespoon green curry powder
• 1 tablespoon plain flour
• 2-3 pieces of star anise
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 cinnamon stick
• 2 lemon grass stalks crush slightly with a meat cleaver
• 1 medium size onion
• 1 shallot finely chopped
• 1 clove of crushed garlic
• 1 crushed birdeye chilli (optional)
• 300ml of water

Condiments

• Lettuce leaves
• Few slices of French bread

Useful Tips

• Unlike Indian curry, this curry recipe uses less spices to make, you can add chilli according to your taste.

Method

• Dice the beef, potato, green, red peppers and onion to 2cm squares. Keep all ingredients separate.
• First prepare the curry sauce, pour 3 tablespoons vegetable cooking oil into a wok or heavy-base sauce pan. On a medium heat, fry the onion, shallot and garlic. Then add the curry powder, star anise, bay leaves, cinnamon and lemon grass. Stir vigorously to prevent burning. Add seasoning according to taste. Dilute the pain flour with 300ml water, stir well until lumps disappear. Blend the liquid in the wok or saucepan for few second until the sauce has thickened.
• Put the cut beef and potato chunks into the sauce to cook. Turn the heat down to moderate and keep stirring to prevent the sauce from burning. Add the peas, green and red peppers to the wok and cook for a further 3 minutes.
• Before serving, remove the star anise and lemon grass from wok. Served with rice or French bread.