Recipe: Gundooee Wagyu Beef Mussaman Curry

Of course we came back with some wagyu beef from Gundooee - some Flinstone-sized steaks ( that went into the freezer) and about 1 kg of shin meat. Shin is a perfect cut for slow-cooking so I wanted to use it in a Thai Mussaman curry. This recipe is from the Arun Thai Restaurant cookbook 'Lemongrass and Basil'.

This free rage wagyu has beautiful marbling. The muscles worked hard so they are going to hold a lot of flavour.

The main ingredients are pretty simple but for your curry to have a fresh authentic pungency you should make your own mussaman curry paste. I know the list of ingredients can look daunting. Believe me, it's worth going the extra mile.

Throw all the ingredients into a small blender after they've been dry roasted..

...and you have plenty for your curry and enough paste for another two dishes. The paste can be stored in the fridge for up to three months.

Recipe: Mussaman Beef Curry with Gundooee Wagyu

Ingredients:

1 1/2 litres coconut milk

100g mussaman curry paste

1 kg beef topside, shank or shin cut into 2.5 cm pieces

Handful of dried bay leaves (or 5-6 fresh bay leaves)

12 small new potatoes

8 pickling onions, peeled

5 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce

3 tablespoons palm sugar

7 tablespoons Tamarind juice

Fried onions, coriander leaves and slices of chilli

Mussaman curry paste

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

2 cardamom pods

1 teaspooon black peppercorns

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 nutmeg

2 cloves

6 big dried chillies, deseeded and soaked in water

4 cloves of garlic

6 slices of galangal

1 stalk of lemongrass

1 teaspoon of shrimp paste

2 teaspoons of vegetable oil

1 teaspoon salt

Method:

Heat your wok or pan over a low heat and add the coriander seeds, cardamom, black pepper, cumin, nutmeg and cloves and dry stir-fry until fragrant about 4-5 minutes. Remove and set aside to cool. Using the same wok, sitr fry all the remaining ingredients (except the shrimp paste, oil and salt)

Put all the spices in a mortar and pestle or a blender and blend to a fine paste. Add remaining ingredients and blend. Store in a jar in the fridge.

Heat 200 ml of coconut milk in a large saucepan and add the mussaman paste, stirring together until the oil from the paste separates and rises to the surface.

Add the beef stirring well to combine with coconut milk mixture then add the bay leaves and the remaining coconut milk and simmer for three hours until the beef if tender. ( This is when I went off to do the laundry and water the plants! I only needed 2 1/2 hours cooking time)
Add the potatoes and onions and simmer for a further hour until the potatoes are cooked. Season the curry with fish sauce, palm sugar and tamarind juice. Garnish with fried onions, coriander leaves and slices of chilli and serve with some jasmine rice.

I'm sure the wagyu beef made this curry soar to new delicious heights. It's very mild - despite the chillis - and had a sweet, sour, salty, hot balance that Thai curries are famous for. The meat literally melted, the sauce was rich and thick and the potatoes were soft and mushy.Yummmmmm...

Thanks Rob and Nita!

I don't know whether it was being surrounded by all that glorious bush for the weekend but I came back to Potts Point creatively inspired and knocked up this watercolour yesterday morning. Doesn't quite do my view justice but you get the general drift.....