Beef Heart Curry
Cleavers Meat Market is one of the three dedicated organic butchers in Copenhangen. Often when shopping there, I end up chatting with the staff about all kinds of recipes, drawing stares from the other customers waiting to be served.
When your meat vendor is a also foodie, long conversations are guaranteed!
One day I told Steph that I was working on a series of recipes dedicated to organ meats. Did he have any favorites?
He very much did. Beef heart curry done the traditional way!
I liked the idea immediately. Heart meat is a tougher cut, so it takes longer to tenderize; a simmering curry recipe made all the sense.
This is the first in a series of installments on on offal and organs meats.
Ingredients
Serves 3
About 1/2 kg beef heart, in slices.
Spice Mixes
- curry paste (see Notes below)
- garam masala to taste.
Extra spices
- fresh ginger
- chillies (Red or Green Fireflame, for example)
- lemongrass
— all fresh, peeled, and finely chopped.
All the rest
- coconut oil (for frying)
- 50 grams ghee
- 1-2 onions, diced
- 5-6 tomatoes
- salt to taste
- 1/3 to 1/2 standard glass of wine
- 1-3 cloves of garlic.
Procedure
- Heat the pan to very hot, and grill the tomatoes until they are evenly "blackened". Remove from heat, cut in quarters, and set aside.
- When the pan has cooled off a bit, add coconut oil and fry the onions, stirring until golden.
- Add in the meat slices, stir, fry some more.
- Add in the curry paste (or the Chaat Masala and Madras Carry mixture).
- Add in ghee; fry for a bit more.
- Add in ginger, chilli and lemongrass; fry for a few seconds.
- Add in the grilled tomato pieces; salt to taste; lower the heat to simmering level.
- Cover with lid, and let simmer for 40 minutes.
- 5 minutes before finish time, add in the Garam Masala dissolved in wine.
- Before removing from heat, added in the chopped garlic.
Total time simmering: ≈45 minutes.
Notes
Being a curry, this dish can be made with anything: lamb, chicken, etc.
If you want it spicy, use whole chillis. Otherwise, remove the seeds.
The main ingredient in creating the flavor is curry paste. If you don't have it, no problem. Here's what I used:
- one topped teaspoonful Madras Curry
- one topped teaspoonful Chaat Masala.
Mix the two together and, and you'll get a similar tangy, umami flavor.
How to cut up the hearts (your butcher probably knows this):
- remove the inner membranes
- remove the outer sinewy layer (which is mostly tough fat)
- cut up into slices alá beuf stroganoff.
Being British, Steph claims to have observed many an Indian mama cook curry this way. We'll just have to take his word for it!
