December 29th

December 29, 2007

I’m a huge fan of Indian food, although you may not realize it from reading this because it seems I don’t cook as much of it as I used to and, except for a few mentions of vindaloo, I haven’t written about any Indian recipes that I’ve made. It seems to me that Indian food isn’t as popular as it used to be and that other SE Asian cuisines, like Thai and Vietnamese, get more attention these days, which is ashamed because Indian cooking is widely varied and dramatically different throughout the various regions of the country.

I had a craving for Beef Saag, which is chunks of Beef braised in a spinach sauce. It’s one of the great dishes of Mogul cooking but if you haven’t had it, it may sound a bit unusual. Like all braises, you need to brown the meat first and then remove it from the pan. This builds up a fond in the pot, which helps to build flavor, and also caramelizes the meat. The sauce is made by sautéing onions, garlic, and ginger until browned and then adding coriander, cumin, turmeric, cardamom, cloves, dried red chile and a few other spices into the pot and then adding some blanched cut-up spinach and a little tomato. Cook the sauce a little bit and then add some yogurt or sour cream and puree the sauce. Turn the heart down low, and add the meat back in and braise it slowly until the meat is tender. At the very end add some garam masala which is an aromatic spice blend, and let it simmer for about another 5-10 minutes.

It’s the type of recipe that works best with a tougher cut of meat, like beef chuck, but all I had was some petit sirloin, which gets incredibly tough if you try to braise it. So I browned the meat, made the sauce and let the sauce cook slowly without the meat and then added the meat to the pot when I added the garam masala. This ensured the meat didn’t overcook and was still red in the middle when I served it. OK, it didn’t stew and add flavor to the sauce, but sometimes we work with what we have. The whole thing was served on steamed basmati rice.

Beer is the obvious choice with Indian food because the amount and types of spices will kill any wine. Although I love Belgian beers, I find most of them aren’t as good with spicier food as a lower alcohol maltier style of beer, like less hoppy pale ales and brown ales. I had brewed a brown ale earlier in the day, but ti wouldn’t be ready for about 10 days so the choice was more of the English bitter I had. It’s fairly malty, but still low in alcohol (about 4.5%). I wish it had a tad more malt to it, but it’s very good, and was made using a London Ale yeast strain (which is purported to be the house yeast of Youngs). The aroma was caramelly with the slight fruity esters you expect in English bitter and a fair hint of Goldings hops. There was also a slightly tea-like note to the aroma as well. Because the beer had a lighter body, it was very refreshing with the food, but ti still had enough to stand up to the onslaught of spices.