Mincing Beef - A Chilli Con Carne Recipe

I mentioned in my last food blog (about peeling almonds for Lamb Rogan Josh) that I wasn't one for posting recipes.  However, that particular post got me thinking about how food preparation can vary in India compared to in the UK. Or how difficult it can be. And that perhaps writing about making dinner in Mumbai, would provide some useful tips for other expats (whilst also showing the folks back home some of the lengths one may have to go to make non-Indian dishes!).  

So here we have my favourite Chilli Con Carne recipe by Jo Pratt, which contains spices other than chilli - a subtle amount of cumin and coriander - as well as Brit favourites such as Worcester sauce and an Oxo cube. All the ingredients for this dish are available on Pali Market in Bandra and probably at Nature's Basket (branches around the city).  Mr Jules also made a side salad to go with the Chilli - but I will talk about preparing salads in another post. A whole other story!

Lean tenderloin/undercut from Joseph's in Bandra

On the same theme of having to peel almonds for my Rogan Josh (gosh, such an inconvenience!), this blog is about beef - and mincing it (or grinding it if you are from the US).  You can simply not (yet) get UK supermarket style minced beef in India. Don't forget that the majority of Hindu Indians do not eat beef anyway, so it can be quite difficult obtain it, let alone get it minced.  You can buy minced beef from my favourite butchers -  Joseph's in Bandra - but it is too finely ground for a majority of western recipes. Such as Bolognese sauce or beef-burgers.  I think it is probably more 'Keema' in style.  

Hence why we have invested in a very handy little machine for grinding meat ourselves (available on Amazon, follow this link - you may have to pay for international delivery).  Once you have worked out how to put it together, the rest is easy.  You simply pass the beef through the machine whilst vigorously turning the handle, ending up with the sort of perfect mince that you will find at a supermarket back home.  And because the beef from Joseph's is so lean (ask for 'tenderloin/undercut'), you will end up with a nice low fat bit of mince.

All of this does require a little more effort than usual, but now Mr Jules and I have the ability to enjoy the perfect home-made Spag Bol, Chilli or Meatballs.  Yum.

My mincer delivered by Amazon - very easy to operate and it hasn't yet faltered after many many uses.

Now that we've got that sorted, here is the recipe.  I love the bit about adding the wine and then pouring yourself a glass!

Ingredients (serves 6 - 8)

2 tbsp olive oil

2 chopped onions

2 crushed garlic cloves

1 kg lean minced beef

2 glasses red wine (Sula is fine!)

2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes

3 tbsp tomato puree

2 red chillies thinly sliced or 3-4 tsp dried chilli flakes

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 stick cinnamon

Good shake Worcestershire Sauce

1 beef stock cube

Salt and pepper

2 x 440g kidney beans, drained

1 large bunch coriander leaves, roughly chopped 

Method

1. Heat the oil in a large, heavy based saucepan and fry the onion and garlic until softened.  Increase the heat and add the mince, cooking quickly until browned and breaking down and chunks of meat with a wooden spoon.
2. Pour in the red wine and boil for 2-3 minutes.  While waiting, pour a glass for yourself.
3. Stir in the tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, fresh chilli or chilli flakes, cumin, ground coriander, cinnamon, and Worcestershire sauce and crumble in the stock cube.
4. Season well with salt and pepper, bring to a simmer, cover with a lid and cook over a gentle heat for about 50 minutes to an hour.  Stir occasionally until the mixture is rich and thickened.
5. Add the kidney beans and fresh coriander.  Cook for a further 10 minutes uncovered.
6. Taste and add seasoning as you feel necessary before removing from the heat.
7. Ideal served with plain basmati rice and wedges of lime.  You can also try it with french bread, guacamole and soured cream, jacked potatoes etc etc.

Tip

This dish is even tastier a day or two after cooking when the flavours have developed and the texture becomes richer.

Frying off the onions and garlic

Browning the hand-minced beef before throwing in a glass of red wine (whilst polishing off a glass yourself)

After adding the tomatoes, add the spices and cinnamon stick (this one is from a spice farm in Goa!)

The finished product.  Serve with fluffy basmati rice and a side salad

Sprinkle with freshly chopped coriander (which I forgot)

All the ingredients are available locally (except perhaps for Oxo cubes
which I brought from the UK - but you can discount it from the recipe anyway, as the
undercut beef from Joseph's is so beefy you won't need it.

Mr Jules's simple avocado and spring onion salad - will write about preparing salad another time.

Joseph's : Mumbai Master Butcher

This post is for home-sick expats craving quality meat who think there is no western style butcher in Mumbai.  Or worse, for those expats who actually go all the way up to the Renaissance Hotel in Powai to buy their meat (does the head chef know about this?). Or even worse than that, for those British whom I have heard bring frozen steak on a flight all the way from the UK in their luggage and try to squeeze it past Indian Customs. 

Perhaps there are many quality butchers in Mumbai, I don't know - but what I can tell you is that Joseph's Cold Storage (which I believe to be the best) is about one minute's walk away from our apartment in Pali Naka and they do great steak.  Yay.

The first I heard of Joseph's was when I was stuck back in London for four months apart from Mr Jules, prior to me coming out to join him.  One day, I had a joyous text message announcing that he found a place to buy Yorkshire Pork Sausages. All was right with the world again.

Today, I went to buy steak for tonight's dinner.  It doesn't say fillet, sirloin or rump steak on the board - there is one choice available and it's called tenderloin or 'undercut'. I would say that it is closest to sirloin steak but it is has hardly any fat on it.  You buy it in whatever lumps of meat are available - usually anything over 1kg.  Today I had to buy a piece that was 1.5kgs.  And by UK standards it's so cheap....300 rupees per kilo - that's £3.50 or $5.6 per kilo!  Because there is only two of us I have them slice it up and placed in two bags so that I can freeze one of them. That means that tonight's portion of steak will cost about £1.75 for the two of us.

What's available / the pricelist

You can also buy lean mince, hallal chicken breasts and joints, Yorkshire pork shoulder or leg (we made a mean roast a couple of weekends ago), bacon, beef etc etc.  The full list is on the board above.  Everything is cheap by western standards and as I have found, cuts of meat are as good as anything you can get in Waitrose.  Not so great is the bacon - it is a little too salty but if you chop it up small and add it to dishes such as spaghetti and pesto, it is fine.  (Note: the bacon comes in packets and looks like ham, but it is not, you must still cook it). The sausages again are too salty and we would not recommend them for a British or American fry up (oh yes, Mr Jules was a bit disappointed in the end with his sausages).  However, they probably would be good chopped up into a pasta sauce with fennel seeds.  Also with the ground beef, the mincing is a bit too fine for say, a bolognaise sauce (it's more keema style for curries and koftas), so Mr Jules and I shipped a mincer from Amazon  to mince the undercut and it works just fine. You are all invited for lasagne! 

Free range eggs are also available (bring your own box or you have to carefully carry them home in a plastic bag like we did!) - 6 for 23 rupees (27p), home-style curry sauces and pickles.  In fact I am sure if you ask the very nice owner, Anil, you can probably get pretty much anything for your home cooking requirements.

As a side note, you can buy beef and pork because this business is run by Christian folk - Anil and Sandra D'Souza - and Bandra has a long Christian heritage being settled by the Portuguese in the 1700s. You will often find Anil at the counter serving throngs of expats - I have seen French, Japanese, American, many British - as well as Indians who come far and wide to buy his quality products.

Anil manning his meat empire

When you go to the shop on St John's road and go up to the counter you will see large numbers of staff milling about in the back.  There are four or five men at the counter taking orders and shouting them to the back (they wear the red t-shirts), there are about ten guys pulling stuff out of the fridges (blue t-shirts, yellow aprons) and then two counters with several more guys doing the chopping and weighing.  It's quite an operation - I can only guess that they are supplying the many local restaurants as well as the expat and non-vegetarian community.

The hordes of workers.  The shop is closely managed, very clean and the staff wear uniforms.

The guys who take the orders.  Anil let me take a photo behind the counter. This boy wanted to get in all the photos.

The big man himself.  Anil D'Souza "here to serve God and here to serve you"...or so he says

Selection of cooking sauces to go with your meat purchases.

The beef tenderloin / undercut.  Very lean and very tender (really really sorry to any vegetarian Hindus reading this post)

Last weekend's yummy Yorkshire roast pork with crackling and roast potatoes.  All achieved in our convection oven/microwave. After being in British Roast Dinner Wilderness, we were a bit hasty to get it on the plate and eat it, hence the lack of presentation!

Tonight we will be having steak with chips, fried onions, mushrooms and green beans.  Or perhaps I will slice it thinly and make a stroganoff with mushrooms and onions.  I will have to see what Mr Jules fancies when he comes in.....

Joseph Cold Storage
Gasper Enclave
Shop No 15, St John's Road
Pali
Bandra West
Mumbai 400 050

Tues to Sat 8am to 1.30 pm and 4pm to 8pm
Sun & Mon 8am to 1.30pm only.

PostScript: we had mashed potatoes and al-dente green beans with our steak.  Yum.