Dinner Diary - Beef and Mushroom Rogan Josh

Yes, we're making freezer space for beef coming next week, so we're eating a LOT more meat this week than normal. Which meant defrosting two big chunks on which the labels had faded. One turned out to be very exciting indeed, and I'll cook that tomorrow. The other turned out to be still pretty good - a big chunk of lean beef. And I had a hankering for something spicy. So, a simple Rogan Josh was the choice.

This is an easy enough dish to cook. Make a paste by dropping maybe three cloves of garlic, an inch of ginger, two or three chilis, salt, pepper, some cloves, cardamon pods, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, paprika and some lemon juice into the food processor, and zuzz them up. 

Now brown your meat off, in batches if you must, and put it into a stew pot. Turn the oven on at 180C, and try not to eat too many bits of beef once they're deliciously browned. When its all brown, put a bit more oil in the pan and soften off a chopped onion, before adding your paste and cooking it until its aromatic. It doesn't take long, but it makes such a difference to the flavour of the final dish if you do this. You're basically frying off the paste and using it to get the meat flavour back off the pan surface. When you've done this, add maybe a cup and a half of stock, swirl it around, and pour it on to the meat. 

Now in go the mushrooms - about the same volume of shrooms as of meat is good. Here I used the same as I've been putting in dishes all week - field mushrooms, horse mushrooms, blewits and parasols (with a couple of little oyster mushrooms) but use what you've got. 

And then in goes maybe a cup and a half of yoghurt, at least for the amount we were cooking, and half a teaspoon of cinnamon. Stir this in well. Yes, you can use low fat yoghurt if you like, in fact thats what I had so thats what I used. And then into the oven you go with it, for maybe an hour. If when you check it it looks a bit too watery, take the lid off and let it reduce.

And basically thats it - at the end, when you taste it, if you want a little more spice add some garam masala and cook it on the hob for a minute you can, but you might be happy with how it is before that so give it a go. 

I felt a bit retro yesterday so I cooked rice with a spoon of turmeric in. I like the flavour of that, and I love the colour. Basmati is my go-to kind of rice, so I used that. 

By cooking this with mushrooms its a really rich, deeply flavoured sauce, and by cooking it for an hour in the oven almost any cut of beef will work well. Its ideal if you've a mystery lump in the freezer.