u/thewasteland55

A rendang is a proper full day cooking project - perfect for a Saturday.

This uses beef shin, which I cut up into chunks and browned in the pan. Then a spice paste (bumbu), with all the SE Asian ingredients you’d expect - shallots, garlic, ginger, galangal, rehydrated red chilis, lemongrass, ground turmeric and coriander. The beef is added back into the pan with some whole lemongrass, a couple of cinnamon sticks, as well as some cloves, cardamom and star anise.

It bubbles away covered on medium-low, then after 75 minutes, lid off, and add tamarind, brown sugar, makrut lime leaves, salt and kerisik (freshly toasted desiccated coconut). This should bubble on low, uncovered for a few hours. I did 3 hours. Stir it occasionally to make sure it doesn’t stick.

The whole thing took about 6 hours start to finish - I was working at a very leisurely pace - and was totally worth it 🇮🇩

Supernova in the East Part 6, followed by Grave of the Fireflies was a heck of a way to spend a Saturday afternoon/evening.

Towards in the end of the episode, Dan gets into the fire bombings/air raids of the Japanese home islands and it made me want to revisit a film I haven’t seen for years. Devastating. What Seita and Setsuko go through is about as ‘extremes of the human experience’ as it gets. The film was written by Isao Takahata, who lived through US air raids in June 1945, and shows in devastating detail life under the B-29s for civilians, especially children.

Both amazing on their own, but each one enhances the other. Recommended.