Beef kofta curry with fluffy rice and peas and going crazy over cookbooks

September is a lovely month: spring comes our way, bringing flowers to make the city prettier and, in Sao Paulo’s case, it also brings the much needed rain. But it is also the time of the year when a bunch of cookbooks are released, which makes me tense for as much as I keep telling myself that “I have too many cookbooks” or “I don’t need new cookbooks” I know I don’t sound very convincing. :)

I’ve had my eye on several new releases for a long time and I was already in trouble because I couldn’t make up my mind about which ones to buy, and now to make things worse for me Jamie Oliver has a new cookbook, too. Oh, crap. :S

While I decide whether or not to buy Comfort Food, I’ll use the Jamie’s cookbooks I already own, because they’re really good. This beef kofta comes from the delicious Jamie's 15-Minute Meals, a book I should definitely use more often for it’s packed with tasty recipes.

I adapted the recipe ever so slightly to use curry powder for I did not have any curry paste at hand and also to use brown lentils instead of the super expensive (at least here) puy lentils called for in the original recipe. These “adaptations” saved me some money, I used ingredients I already had at home, and at the end the food turned out delicious – and I even got the husband to eat lentils, which was the real victory here. :D

Beef kofta curry with fluffy rice and peas
slightly adapted from the wonderful Jamie's 15-Minute Meals

100g cooked lentils
300g quality lean beef mince
1 fat garlic clove, minced
1 heaped teaspoon garam masala
generous ½ teaspoon table salt
freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
2 ripe tomatoes
2 teaspoons finely grated fresh ginger
2 spring onions, white part only
½ fresh red chilli
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon runny honey
2 teaspoons curry powder
100ml coconut milk
handful parsley

For the rice:
1 teaspoon olive oil
½ onion, finely diced
1 mug basmati rice
2 cardamom pods
salt
150g frozen peas

In a bowl, combine the lentils, mince, garlic, garam masala, salt and pepper then mix and scrunch together with clean hands. Divide the mixture in half, then with wet hands quickly squeeze and mold each half into 8 fat fingers. Put them into a nonstick frying pan over medium-high heat, drizzle with ½ tablespoon of oil, and cook, turning occasionally until golden all around.

Squash the tomatoes into the liquidizer, add the peeled ginger, spring onions, chilli, turmeric, honey, curry and coconut milk, then blitz until combined. Pour into the kofta pan, bring to the boil, then simmer and season to taste.

Rice: heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Add the onions and cook until translucent. Add the rice and stir to combine. Add the salt and the cardamom, followed by 2 mugs of boiling water. Cover, lower the heat and cook until rice is cooked and fluffy. Take the lid off the rice, add the peas, mix it all up with a fork, cover and give it just 2-3 more minutes so the peas are cooked. Remove from the heat.

Sprinkle the koftas with the parsley and serve with the rice.

Serves 4