Beef Paprik

Cooking to me has always been a dreaded necessity. When I was a student in UK, good food meant edible food.

But since I am married 5 months ago to a husband with fantastic cooking skills - he conducted cooking classes for his staff at his previous workplace - I had to step up my game.

I surfed internet sites and have several cookbooks. Somehow you know how things turn out just by reading the recipe, especially those from Internet, so I tend to improvise. It's difficult to keep track of my improvised recipes, so I guess a blog should do it!

My first recipe is Beef Paprik, a staple Malay hawker dish that hails from Southern Thailand. I read the recipes in Trymasak and Mesra.net and made some improvisations -- Hubby said it's just like dining out! I cooked it yesterday and ate it along with leftover chicken from my Haianese Chicken Rice along with a glass of fresh watermelon juice.

Beef Paprik (Daging Paprik)
Blended:
4 shallots
3 cloves of garlic
1 cm ginger
7 pieces of dried chilli (already cut to pieces and immersed in hot water)

200g beef - thinly sliced and marinade in 1 tsp of salt

1/2 large yellow onion - sliced
1 carrot - chopped
Some broccoli
2 green onion - chopped
6 bird chillies - mildly pounded
6 kaffir lime leaves
1 lemongrass (mildly pounded at the roots)
1/2 cup of water

Some salt
1 tbsp chilli sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp Thai fish sauce (nam pla)
1 tsp thick soy sauce (or regular soy sauce)
(optional: 1 tsp cornstarch in water)


Some Thai basil - chopped

1. Heat oil in wok. Stirfry beef until half-cooked.
2. Put blended products into wok - stirfry until fragrant. Add carrot and broccoli and mix until half-cooked. While cooking, add some water.
3. Add beef and green onion into wok along with lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves. Stir until well done. Add some cornstarch and water to thicken the sauce.
4. Serve with Thai basil.

For this dish I did not have enough shallots (only one left!), so I used the other half of large yellow onion to blend. It made the sauce thicker -- so if you think that your sauce is not thick enough, do add some cornstarch with water. Please do not go overboard with the oyster sauce and soy sauce -- it will turn out to be just like Malay/Chinese version of stirfried beef in soy sauce.

Our Beef Paprik is probably in our lower intestines, digesting merrily, so no pictorial evidence for now..