Pea & Beef Kerala - something nice to cook on a soggy winter night

Hello Friends,
Where are the crisp frosty mornings this year? I'm always far more inspired to get outside for walks or gardening on a really cold bright day than I am in this warmer but deeply soggy weather. By evening, I'm more than ready to close the curtains on yet more rain, switch on the fairy lights in the kitchen, find a CD & settle down to cook something good, so this week, I'm sharing a recipe we both enjoy eating. Pea & beef kerala - it's easy, tasty & reasonably healthy too.

I've collected recipes since I first started cooking in secondary school. I clip interesting sounding recipes from newspapers & magazines, scribble them down from library books, cut them off product packaging, make notes from TV programmes, print them from websites - anything I think I'd enjoy making or adapting is added to my collection. When I can no longer shut the lid on my green box, the recipes are sorted & the best ones transferred to books for keeping. Any for stuff I've totally gone off the idea of making are composted (like anything that sits around in this house for too long, such is my evangelical zeal for making scrummy free plant food out of now't!)

I received this large recipe notebook as a Christmas gift in 1991 & use it at least weekly. It's so rammed that there are even recipes on the end papers, inside covers & titchy ones squeezed into margins. This is my 'go to' book for old favourites such as my tuna fish pie, for pear cake, lentil roast, BBQ sauce, carrot & garlic chutney & tons of others. Then I moved on to my 'Garden notebook', also now full, before starting a Christmas edition to allow me to scrapbook festive favourites like my mini-sausage pies, a rather slurpmongous cranberry vodka & the 'house' Christmas Day sauces & stuffings. 

I tend to pick up new recipes from almost anywhere. This week's share actually arrived in the post years ago as a piece of unsolicited junk mail before we registered with the Mail Preference Service. I used to chuck most of it straight in the bin (does anyone ever buy that giant single heated slipper or battery-operated ear-wax hoover?), but on this occasion, for some unknown reason, I'd been singled out for a booklet from a British pea-championing organisation! Yes, a free booklet of 'Things I may never have thought to do with frozen peas' was mine. Most of the recipes were things I could make without a Very Helpful Booklet, but I copied out the recipe for pea & beef kerala. I've barely adapted it since then - simply to swap the suggested rump steak for the much cheaper & thinner frying steak, which cooks quickly & makes excellent strips. 

Pea & Beef Kerala (Serves 4)
1 firm medium cooked potato, cut into cubes
500g frying steak
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2cms fresh root ginger, grated (you need about 2tsp)
1 tbsp red chilli, finely chopped
2 onions, peeled & sliced into half rings
75ml beef stock (a cube is fine)
2 tbsp tomato puree
1/2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp chilli powder
Juice of 2 lemons
3 tomatoes, peeled & chopped
200g frozen peas
salt & black pepper
Oil
Fresh coriander if you have some

Using a sharp knife or scissors, cut the steak into small thin strips. Put in a bowl & add garlic, black pepper, ginger, chopped chilli & mix till coated. Can be left to marinate at this stage, but it's fine to crack on straight away. Heat a little oil & fry the steak strips in batches over high heat. Remove from pan & set aside. Add onion & cook till soft & golden. Remove & set aside. Add stock, tomato puree, soy sauce, chilli powder & lemon juice to pan, bring to boil, reduce to simmer. Now add onions, tomatoes & peas. Cook for 2 mins. Add the steak & cubed potato & stir until heated through. Taste for seasoning. Contains stock & soy sauce, so won't need much salt. If you like a bit of a green flourish, add some chopped fresh coriander before serving.  
We usually eat this with plain rice, but you could do a flavoured one if you were feeling a bit creative & la-di-dah fancypants in the rice department.

OK, so there's an easy warming recipe from my collection of Very Useful Stuff amassed over the years. Why not give it a go? It's a good 'fakeaway' dish, when really, you fancy a takeaway but are baulking at the potential calorie armageddon & the £30. And it's easy! So for non-cooks....no excuses!

Hope everyone is so far avoiding too much in the way of seasonal sniffles. The Big Hairy Half of the Relationship went down with a slight cold last week (very unusual for his tungsten steel constitution) but unusually, I didn't get it. I am, however, keeping the hand-gel industry afloat!
Till next time,
C x