Coconut Meat Curry With Potatoes

To me, there is nothing more comforting that the good old fashioned meat curry with rice. I've given this a slight twist by adding some coconut milk to it. All my recipes are family oriented, so i've reduced the spice level so that its good for children as well.

I usually cook all my beef and pork in a pressure cooker as this not only saves on time but it makes it "melt in the mouth tender" as well. If you don't have a pressure cooker, you can cook it on a slow fire, which will probably take close to an hour or so of cooking.

Coconut Meat Curry with Potatoes

Ingredients:
500gms beef cubes, 1" cube pieces
2 onions, chopped fine
2 tsp tomato paste
1 tsp ginger garlic paste
salt to taste
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp coriander powder
1/4 tsp chilli powder
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
3 tbsps coconut powder
handful of curry leaves
2 potatoes peeled and diced into 1 inch cubes

Method:
In a pressure cooker, saute the onions and ginger garlic paste in oil. Add in the salt and tomato paste (I never use more than half a teaspoon of salt in any of my dishes).

As for the tomato paste, here in Dubai, I have noticed that the local tomatoes do not have any colour or taste and the better variety that are imported are overpriced, so I buy good quality tomatoes only for salads or certain dishes. In this case, you will hardly notice the difference by adding the tomato paste.

Add in the masala powders and stir into the sauted mixture of onions, tomato, ginger and garlic. If at any point you feel the mixture is burning, add in a little bit of water.

Now add the meat and fry the mixture for a bit. When the meat takes on a nice brown colour, you can add in about 1/2 a glass to 1 glass of water depending on the size of your pressure cooker and just enough to cover the mixture. Now fit the pressure cooker lid on, and increase the heat to full. Wait for the pressure cooker to whistle and then lower the heat to the first or second lowest setting on your cooker and time for 25 mins.

After 25 mins, take the cooker off the heat. Pressure cookers are dangerous and need to be handled with care so this is what I usually do when I need to open it; to release the steam you need to lift off the counterweight gradually and bleed off the steam, I usually do this by levering the weight with a fork  and adjusting it to let out the steam gently or just run the sides of the cooker under water until it has suffficiently cooled down to reduce the pressure in the cooker.

Do NOT attempt to open the cooker without letting off the steam as this could result in some serious steam burns.

Once your pressure cooker is open add in the potatoes. Give it a quick stir to get the potatoes nicely mixed in with the curry and close the cooker again. Put it back on the heat on full power and as soon as it whistles, turn off the heat and open the pressure cooker taking the precautions I mentioned above.

Potatoes don't take very long to cook unless you keep them in very big chunks. So if you have left them as big chunks give it an additional 5 mins on low heat after the first whistle.

Once the potatoes are done, take the coconut powder in a small bowl and mix with some water, about a cup of water should do, mix it to an even consistency and add it in the meat curry. Don't stir it too much at this stage as you dont want to break up the potatoes.

Add in the curry leaves. I leave the curry leaves for the last as you get a nice strong flavour as opposed to adding them earlier where they make the curry slightly bitter.

Turn off the heat once the curry starts to bubble. You do not want it to reach full boiling point. This dish once cooled can stay in the fridge for a couple of days.

I enjoy this dish best with nice hot steaming white rice.