Comfort Food: Slow-Cooked Coconut Beef Rib Curry

Welcome to Comfort Food. Each week during winter, we’re bringing you a delicious, soul-soothing recipe designed to deliver the sunshine you’re missing in the cooler months—in food form. From the brilliant mind of accomplished recipe developer, food stylist and author Kirsten Jenkins comes everything from an Italian breakfast pizza worth getting out of bed for (yep, even when it’s 4°C) to a banana cake with moreish coconut caramel and black sesame praline. In this instalment, we're serving up a tasty slow-cooked coconut beef rib curry, with lime, cashews and herbs. It's just the kind of comforting goodness required to warm you up when you've come in from the cold. Just add white wine and Netflix. Buon appetito.

Ingredients

1 red onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, peeled

4cm piece of ginger, peeled

1 lemongrass stalk, white part only, finely sliced

6 coriander roots, scraped and cleaned

2 tablespoons water

1 long red chilli, roughly chopped

1 teaspoon coriander seeds, crushed

1 teaspoon cumin seeds, crushed

½ teaspoon ground turmeric

1 cardamom pod

1 cinnamon stick

1 star anise

1 tablespoon sea salt

2 tablespoons coconut oil

1kg beef short ribs

2 x 400ml cans of coconut milk

2 cups of water

8 small shallot onions, peeled

2 ½ tablespoons lime juice

100g baby spinach

½ cup roasted cashew nuts

coriander leaves, sliced green onions and lime wedges, to serve

Method

Place the red onion, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, coriander root, water and chilli in the bowl of a food processor and process until a paste forms. Add the spices to a bowl with the paste mixture and the salt and mix well.

Heat the oil in a large heavy-based saucepan over medium heat, add the beef ribs and cook for 4 minutes or until browned. Remove the ribs from the pan and set aside. Add the paste to the pan and fry for 3-4 minutes or until fragrant. Return the meat to the pan with the coconut milk and water. Bring to the boil, reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, for 2 hours. Add the onions and cook for a further hour uncovered or until the beef is tender and the onions have softened. Remove from the heat, add the lime juice and stir through the spinach leaves. Serve with extra lime wedges and topped with cashew nuts and herbs.

Serves 4.

Loved this? Try our Italian breakfast pizza.