The Curry Tiger

Every Tuesday, I have the pleasure of volunteering at a legal centre in Woolloomooloo, located fortuitously opposite the original Harry's Cafe de Wheels. All I have to do is sigh, "Pie," on a Tuesday and Dan will know what I'm talking about: chunky beef, spicy curry, pastry with a perfect balance of flaky and soggy, mash, peas and gravy. Thus is the Curry Tiger for $5.80. Genius.

I decided to make it at home with some personal touches: shredded slow-cooked beef, creamy curry, homemade pastry (the best!) and lots of creamy, buttery mash.

Pastry

250g plain flour
200g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
½-¾ cups iced water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar

Dice the butter and chill in the freezer for a few minutes.

Combine flour, salt, sugar and butter in a large bowl.

Cut the butter into the flour until you have pea-sized pieces of butter (these will melt in the oven and make the pastry light and flaky). You can use a food processor or a pastry cutter for this step. I have neither so I used a mezzaluna and it worked a treat.

Add the water little by little and mix in with a plastic pastry scraper. Stop when the dough just comes together.

Turn out onto a floured surface and split the mixture into two (one for the base, one for the lid). Mould each dough with your hands and knead two or three times so it all sticks together. Wrap with cling wrap and chill in the fridge for at least half an hour.

You can keep the dough for up to two days in the fridge, which is great because you can make the dough and the filling the night before.

Curry filling

500g osso bucco, washed, dried and salted generously
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 onion
5 cloves garlic, peeled
5cm parsley or coriander stalks, roughly chopped
Chilis, halved (add as many as you'd like)
1 litre water
400ml coconut milk
Curry powder (add to taste)
2 tablespoons plain flour

Heat oil in a deep pot over a medium-high heat.

Sear the meat and remove from pot.

Reduce heat to medium and saute the vegetables.

Add water, coconut milk and curry powder (the instructions on mine recommended 4 tablespoons to a litre of water). Bring to a boil.

Place meat into liquid and simmer gently for at least three hours.

Remove meat and shred with two forks.

Add flour to the liquid and stir in. Strain so you get a smooth sauce.

Place the meat and 500ml of the sauce in a container and chill in the fridge. If you're making the pie on the same day, wait until the filling is completely cool. Otherwise, you can fridge it for about three days.

Note: You'll have a lot of curry sauce leftover. It's infused with delicious marrow and beef fat which you can enjoy with rice or bread.

Making the pie

Preheat the oven to 220°C.

Technically you don't need to line the pan because there's so much butter in the pastry, but I like to be safe. I lined a 20cm springform pan with butter then baking paper.

Roll out the first piece of dough on a floured surface until it's about half a centimetre thick. Gently line the pan with the pastry.

Fill the base with the curry filling.

Roll out the second piece of dough and cut out a circle about 3cm bigger than the pan.

Place the lid on the pie and trim the edges.

Fold down the edges and cut a few holes in the lid to let the steam escape.

Bake until golden brown (my incredibly slow oven took about 40 minutes).

Rest for at least 20 minutes before taking it out of the pan to avoid the pie collapsing.

Serve with mash, peas and gravy.

Enjoy!

Perfect Pan-Fried Steak & Potato Mash

The other night, I was in a Nigella mood: I wanted my food fast without the tediousness of cooking things the “proper way”. Only, I took short cuts that would offend chefs and quite frankly, I appalled myself.

You see, instead of thawing frozen meat, I just put it in a bowl and poured boiling water over it. To make it worse, it was steak. By the time it had defrosted through, the outside had started to cook. I was really irked out but I continued cooking it like normal. I wanted to cry, thinking that I’d ruined a perfectly good piece of meat.

That is, until I tasted it.

It was the juiciest, most tender and meatiest-tasting steak I’d ever cooked on the pan! I can’t explain it – all my culinary knowledge about meat points against boiling steak – but it was almost perfect. I do know that kosher meat is boiled to draw out blood and impurities and supposedly this leaves a more refined meat taste. Also, I guess gently cooking the outside of the steak means that it won’t seize up on contact with a hot pan. Either way, this is a fool-proof method for making an excellent steak at home (without a grill or woodfire oven).

So juicy...

Inspired by Heston Blumenthal’s way of cooking, I fiddled around a bit to find the best way to parboil steak before pan-frying. Took a while to fine-tune but I’m very happy with this recipe.

1 steak (make sure it’s a cut that’s suitable for grilling or pan-frying)
2 cloves garlic
Fresh rosemary
Fresh thyme
Olive oil

Put steak in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Slowly bring to 55°C and simmer at the same temperature for 15 minutes. (This is the temperature commonly used for a sous-vide and the idea is to make it hot enough to draw out the blood but not hot enough for the meat to tense up.)

Remove and rest until cool.

Dry well with paper towels, pressing on the steak to soak up excess blood.

Rub olive oil, 1 clove crushed garlic, salt and pepper on both sides.

Heat pan to a very high heat and cook steak for 3 minutes on each side.

Remove and place on a plate or chopping board and immediately dress with olive oil, crushed garlic and chopped rosemary and thyme.

Rest for at least 5 minutes before serving.

Of course, you must have steak with mash. I never really felt the urge to blog about mash until I saw Heston Blumenthal make the ultimate potato mash on “In Search of Perfection”. The recipe was so ingenious and well thought out that I must share.

1 kg potatoes
300g unsalted butter, cubed
Salt
Cream

Wash, peel and slice potatoes into even pieces (about 1 inch). Cover with cold water in a pot. Slowly bring to 70°C and simmer at the same temperature for 30 minutes. (This locks in the glutens so that the mash isn’t gluey.)

Drain and place potato slices in iced water.

Wash the pot, refill with water, add salt and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and add potatoes (and 3 cloves of garlic if you like garlic in your mash). Simmer until potatoes are tender.

Drain and place potatoes and garlic back in the pot. Shake the pot gently over a low heat to completely dry.

Push potatoes and garlic through a potato ricer into a bowl with butter.

Push through a drum sieve for a finer consistency (optional).

Put back into pot, adding salt and cream to taste. Whisk well over a low heat until light and fluffy.

Enjoy!