Weekend Cooking: Beef and Vegetable Red Curry

Sometimes, despite your best laid plans, things just don't quite go right, and this was the case a couple of weeks ago when we had a plan to try a new recipe which was going to be a Beef and Vegetable Rendang Curry. However, when you realise that you have forgotten to add the rendang curry paste to the shopping list, and then you do an emergency dash to the shop around the corner but they don't have any, you have to improvise.

Now improvisation isn't really my strong point. I am a recipe follower, a weigher of ingredients, I am most definitely not someone who can look in the cupboard and voila....something magical appears. My husband is much better than I am though.

Once he got home from the unsuccessful emergency dash we decided that instead of using rendang and a couple of other ingredients we would use the rest of the red curry paste that we already here in the fridge.

So this recipe is inspired by the Beef and Vegetable Rendang Curry from the Symply Too Good to be True (book 7), and using the techniques in those books, particularly in relation to the use of evaporated milk and coconut essence instead of coconut milk to reduce the calories.

Beef and Vegetable Red Curry

300g potatoes
Cooking spray
500g rump steak cut into bit-size pieces
1 tspn crushed garlic
1 onion, cut in quarters then sliced
2 cups small broccoli florets
1 cup red capsicum diced
1/2 cup water
20 snow peas
3 tbspn red curry paste
1 tbspn cornflour
1 tspn coconut essence
1 x 375 can evaporated light milk

Peel and chop potatoes into bite size pieces. Parboil in a little water in microwave for 5 minutes. Drain and leave to one side.

In a large non-stick frypan that has been coated with cooking spray, place dice rump and garlic into pan and toss together until meat has browned. Remove and leave to one side.

Re-coat pan with cooking spray then add onion, broccoli and capsicum with 1/4 cup water and cook 3 minutes. Add snow peas and potato with the extra 1/4 cup of water and cook 2-3 minutes or until vegetables are almost cooked.

Add curry paste and fold through the vegetables are almost cooked.

Add the meat back to pan.

Combine cornflour with coconut essence and evaporated milk, then add to pan, ,stirring continuously until just boiled. Do not overboil sauce, as the milk may separate. When boiled, take off heat and serve.


If you were going to be making the original rendang recipe you would add 3 tablespoons of rendang curry paste and then 2 tablespoons of kecap manis and 2 teaspoons of reduced salt soy sauce.

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