Beef curry with pomegranates (#ReadCookEat)

"As Kuma continued to chop wood, he told me that the first dish Sinorita had ever cooked for him had been curry...

So curry it was. But this was to be no ordinary curry. It was going to be the best curry ever... At first, I thought about trying to recreate the curry Sinorita had made for him. But his memory was too foggy to recall enough details... And after a lot more thought, I finally decided to make a pomegranate curry, using fresh pomegranates from a place I knew in the depths of the forest.

Adding a few handfuls of pomegranate seeds gave the curry a deep, ruby-red colour and a sweet-sour taste that made your mouth water...

Lying on the spotless kitchen counter next to the pomegranates were some onions and beef that looked like they couldn't wait to be cooked...

"Ringo-chan! I've never eaten a curry like this in my life!" 

(Ito Ogawa, The Restaurant of Love Regained)

The Restaurant of Love Regained, a Japanese bestseller, is a hymn to food, full of recipe ideas and food preparation in great detail. It's packed full of food descriptions, and I was wondering which meal I could recreate for our #ReadCookEat challenge. Most of the meals were too exotic or demanded a list of ingredients that I don't have or wouldn't want to use. 

Beef curry with pomegranates which Rinko served to Kuma was the most likely candidate. Though the author describes the process of cooking of the pomegranate curry for several pages, most of it was of a lyrical nature. As much as I admire the dedication, I don't talk to food or pray to the God of cooking. 

My recipe is just based on the idea from the book, but most likely Rinko cooked it in a completely different way. The only three ingredients I borrowed from the book were beef, onion and pomegranates.

Beef curry with pomegranates

Ingredients:

450g diced beef

2 tbsp coconut oil

4 shallots, sliced

2 garlic cloves

a sprinkle of chilli flakes

4 tomatoes, chopped

1 star anise

1tsp freshly grated ginger

100g red curry paste (I used Waitrose Cooks' Ingredients jar)

400ml/1 tin coconut milk

200ml set Greek style yogurt

a handful of pomegranate sees

to serve with

basmati rice

200g Greek style yogurt, mixed with chopped fresh mint and pomegranate seeds

Melt the coconut oil in the frying pan, once it starts to sizzle, add the beef and brown it on all sides for about 5 minutes. Add the sliced shallots, garlic, chilli flakes, a star anise, ginger and fry for another 5 minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes, red curry paste and coconut milk. Cook for about 45 minutes on low, simmering. Stir occasionally. At about 10 minutes before the end of cooking , add the yogurt and pomegranate seeds and stir well. 

Cook the basmati rice, rinse in cold water and drain well.

In a small bowl mix the Greek yogurt with the pomegranate seeds and fresh chopped mint.

I don't know if Kuma would have liked my curry, but we certainly enjoyed it. The pomegranates added a beautiful deep sweet sour note to the dish, and the colour was amazing.

I like using Rachel's Organic set Greek yogurt, it is luxuriously thick and delicious. In the last weeks I have been adding it to lots of salads. You might have seen the promotional tubs with a code to enter the competition to win Royal Doulton bowls. Though I have been eating it by a bucketful, I haven't been lucky to win anything yet, but then I am very rarely lucky with instant win comps.

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Have you read a book recently which inspired you to run to the kitchen and cook to your heart's content?

Chris from Cooking Round the World and I are inviting you to recreate a meal, inspired by books and join in our #ReadCookEat challenge.

The idea is to choose a fiction book, either a world classic or modern fiction, and pick up a dish mentioned or described in that book and then recreate it in a recipe. Please say a few lines about your chosen book, and maybe even do a quote from the book.

If you decide to take part, please add the badge to your post and link up back to Chris and me, and either use a link-up tool or add the url of your post as a comment. Alternatively, email either of us with the link to your post (my email is sasha1703 at yahoo dot com).
The challenge will start on 1 June and will end on 30 June 2014.
I promise to Pin all blogs posts taking part in this challenge, as well as RT and Google+.

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