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

Stuffed cabbage parcels - different from the ones my mom used to make

Still on the changing of tastes subject, there are foods nowadays that I adore that I didn’t as a kid (or as even a young adult). I’ve written about it already, but these cabbage parcels made me think about it again because my mom used to make a version of them when I was little and I simply hated it. You might think that I had issues with the dish because I was a kid and kids hate veggies but, that was not it – I would eat a bowl of raw cabbage, just drizzled with lime juice and sprinkled with salt. The problem to me was that the rolls were mushy and watery, and the stuffing (made with a mix of rice and beef mince) would become a compact rock inside the cabbage leaves – and my mom was an excellent cook, which makes me feel sorry for everyone else eating cabbage rolls made that way. :S

These cabbage rolls, however, a recipe a slightly adapted from Anna Del Conte, are a total different story, and that is why I felt like making them as soon as I read the recipe: instead of rice, the mince in the filling is paired with sausage and parmesan – off to a good start already, right? And I added a healthy handful of parsley because everything tastes better with fresh herbs. Then the rolls are baked instead of cooked in water in a pressure cooker – another great step to avoid a watery dish. And, to make it all even tastier, there’s tomato sauce involved, and I’m a sucker for anything with tomato sauce.

The cabbage rolls turned out delicious and to me this has become THE way of cooking them – my husband, who also grew up with cabbage rolls made the other way, loved them, too. :)

Stuffed cabbage parcels
from the always mouthwatering Delicious UK

400g green cabbage, outer leaves discarded (or kept for another dish)
350g lean minced beef
2 sausages, skins removed, crumbled
3 tablespoons grated parmesan
1 large egg
salt and freshly ground black pepper
pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
30g white bread, crusts removed
5 tablespoons whole milk
1 clove
generous handful parsley leaves, chopped
2 garlic cloves, halved
olive oil for greasing
4 very ripe tomatoes
25g unsalted butter

Cut off the core end of the cabbage, then gently unfold and separate the leaves. Wash them.
Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil. Add the cabbage leaves, then blanch for 3 minutes. Remove them carefully from the water using a slotted spoon and put in a single layer on a double thickness of kitchen paper.
Filling: in a large bowl, combine the beef, sausage meat, parmesan and egg. Season with salt and pepper, the nutmeg and mix to combine. In a small saucepan, place the bread, milk and clove and cook over low heat, stirring, until the bread has absorbed the milk. Discard the clove and tip the mixture on the bowl with the meat, mixing to combine. Season again if necessary, then mix in the parsley.
Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F. Set aside a shallow large heatproof dish (one that can hold the cabbage bundles without overlapping) and rub it with the 1 clove of garlic (set aside – you’ll use it again in this recipe) and some olive oil. Pat the cabbage leaves dry with kitchen paper, then remove the tough center stalk. Place 1 heaped tablespoon of stuffing in the middle of each leaf, then roll into bundles, tucking under the ends. Place the bundles side by side on the prepared dish. Halve the tomatoes, remove the seeds and place them in a food processor with the garlic cloves (the one you rubbed the dish with, too), salt and pepper. Whiz until pureed and pour over the cabbage. Dot the bundles with the butter, cover the dish with foil and bake for 25 minutes. Serve immediately.

Serves 4 – with this amount of filling I got 16 cabbage bundles