Empal Gentong Cirebon

Gloomy monday *sigh*. Been raining since last night. Very wet and cold. So I have no choice but to make something with broth again. Sorry for that though. It’s just my habit that when the weather is cold, I mostly cook food with broth or soup.

Basically, this is a beef soup (I added carrots because I was too lazy to cook another vegetable side dish ). Usually we eat this with a squirt of lime juice, chilli sauce, sweet soy sauce, crackers and of course rice.

I highly recommend this if you like Asian style soup. But it might be a bit tricky to find all the spices (sorry for that).

And sorry that most of my posts have been really short lately. Because I’m in that “mood” again, where I can’t really find anything interesting to write about. But hey, I still wrote the recipe  :D

Ingredients:

• 700g beef, cubed
• 1 onion
• 4 garlic cloves
• 3 candle nuts
• 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 lemon grass, crushed
• 2 cloves
• 2 Indonesian bay leaves (salam leaves)
• 100ml coconut milk
• 2 tbsp oil
• salt & pepper

How to:

1. Boil the beef until nice and tender with medium heat.
2. Place onion, garlic, candle nuts, turmeric and nutmeg in a food processor. Blitz until smooth.
3. In a large pot, add the oil and saute the spice paste until fragrance.
4. Add lemon grass, salam leaf and cloves. Saute a bit more for 1 minute.
5. Add the beef into the paste and add the beef stock (the one you used to cook the beef).
6. Add coconut milk, salt and pepper. Stir well. Let it boil for 3 minutes.
7. Add sliced carrots and spring onion. Turn off the heat.
8. Serve with warm jasmine rice and chilli sauce (if you like).

note: I know it’s really difficult to find salam leaf outside Indonesia (I had to bring them from Indonesia my self) but you can use regular bay leaf instead. For 2 salam leaves, just use 1  regular bay leaf, since it has stronger smell.

In the background is banana, strawberry and yogurt smoothie