Anjum's Beef Madras, Naan and Aromatic Pilaf Rice

So, the last few posts have been a little Jamie orientated.  But my new Anjum Anand book, I love curry, finally arrived!

I have had this book on order for about 2 months, it is seriously difficult to get hold of.  I have one of her other books which is great so I really wanted this too.

We decided for our first culinary adventure from this book we would try out the madras recipe as this is Hubby's all time favourite when it comes to curry.

The madras, being beef, takes a LONG time to cook.  But that is ok, it just makes this a weekend recipe.  The recipe involves browning some onions then adding in an assortment of ground spices (this is where it pays to have an electric spice grinder - I don't miss the days when we only had a pestle and mortar!).  The beef is then added with a little water to stop everything sticking and this is cooked for a few minutes to colour and seal.

Ginger, garlic, tomatoes are added with some whole green chillies and the sauce is then reduced.  Once reduced, you add more water and simmer for about 1 hour 15 minutes (see what I mean about it being a weekend recipe?)

Once this time is up you reduce the sauce AGAIN!  Then add cream and coriander to serve.

The great thing about the curry taking so long, unattended is that you have time to make the rice and naan.

I have made naan before, but Anjum has a recipe for 'instant naan' which is brilliant as it is so incredibly quick.  Naan's involve yoghurt which is a bit of a pain as you can only buy natural yoghurt in huge quantities.  We were making half a batch of the naan as we were just cooking for 2 so this called for 2 tablespoons.  I really didn't want to buy loads, so we cheated and bought a vanilla corner yoghurt, used what we needed and threw out the fruit flavoured corner.  Ok, so this is not natural yoghurt, but it was close enough and seemed to work.  I wouldn't recommend trying this with a flavoured yoghurt though, Strawberry naan may be a little odd.

Anjum gives you a few ideas for flavouring your naan.  We chose to top ours with black onion seeds.  This was the result:

These were delicious, very quick and easy to the point that you have to wonder why we buy then normally.  We will definitely make our own in future.

We also made aromatic rice pilaf to go with the madras.  Normally we don't bother with rice, but I wanted to try the recipe out.  I love making this kind of rice because it really is a throw everything in and leave it kind of job.

The rice and the madras in completed form looked like this:

Sorry about the photo, it is difficult to make curry look appetizing and my photography skills just aren't up to it!

The rice was a little disappointing actually.  I have made this before in a slightly different form from another book and this seemed to work better.  Anjum's recipe calls for simmering for 12 -13 minutes, which I did, but the rice wasn't really cooked so I had to add a little more water and leave it a while longer.  However, saying that it is still much more interesting than plain boiled rice which is duller than a very dull thing (in my opinion).

The madras was HOT.  Well, I thought it was hot, Hubby thought it was mild, but he has destroyed his taste buds when it comes to spicy food.  This was probably my own fault as we have some seriously spicy chilli powder which has ruined many a meal before now.

It tasted good though, and the beef benefited from the hour and a half cooking time.  Hubby enjoyed it and he is the real connoisseur, however he said he would prefer chicken next time.

So, Madras - nice but would make with chicken next time - this is just personal preference though, so if you like meaty, fairly hot curries it is a good one.

Rice - ok, I will probably stick with the other recipe I have though, it is quicker and tastier.

Naan - om nom nom.  These will be making an appearance on our dining room table again sometime very soon.