He didn't say anything about the recipe!!! - BEEF TEHARI!

So, Ryan has ADD... or that will probably be his excuse for not including information about the highlight of the night - us cooking beef tehari - a most delicious South Asian dish that infused our common room/ lounge with savory spices aromas (ok, I'm running out of inspiration). And we were supposed to share our tehari cooking process with the posterity...

So here is what was up - we had a big chunk of beef meat - about 2 pounds and we have a 10 pound of basmati rice from the Indian Bazaar, which I bought for obvious reasons (there are 3 South Asians in the house, duh!!!) And we also have a whole lot of spices I acquired over the course of two years in college :) That's why we decided to make Bengali style tehari, which means that we also put potatoes. Technically, if you want to make any South Asian dish specifically Bengali, you just need to put potatoes in it ;)

Let's start with the ingredients: 

• Beef - 2 pounds
• Rice (as good rice as possible) - 1 pound (right about)
• Potatoes - 2-3 
• Onion - 1 
• Ghee/ Butter/ Oil - right about 3 spoons
• Yoghurt - 1 cup
• Bay leaves - 2
• Cumin seeds - 1 tbsp
• Cardamoms - 1-2 black and 3-4 green cardamoms, or about 1 tbsp of powder
• Black pepper - 1 tbsp
• Chili powder - 1 tbsp
• Cloves - 4
• Cinnamon - 2 sticks
• Coriander powder - 1 tbsp and leaves, if you have
• Hot peppers - 2
• Ginger paste - 1-2 tbsp
• Garlic 1-2 tbsp
• Salt

To make it: cut the beef in small cubes and mix all the spices with the yoghurt, the chopped onion, and 2 tbsp of ghee or oil. Then let it marinate in the fridge for about half an hour (you can leave it more - it's ok). 

In the meantime, peel and cut the potatoes in small cubes and wash the rice.

Then put the beef in a pot with as heavy a bottom as possible, add about a cup of water, and start cooking the beef.

In the meantime, bring water to a boil in another pot and add the rice half cook, then drain the water out. Once the beef gets soft, add the rice on top without mixing it. Pour another cup of water, and another spoon of ghee/ oil and cover it. 

At this point, this takes a bit of care... cause we actually burned some of the meat at the bottom. I think the best way to avoid this is to actually put it in the oven. 

Try it out... we'll also put a picture of our food up - once Ryan downloads it! dufffeeer

And, as Indian people like to say: Thank you, come again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_OVlrZXstk&feature=related