A nice (Indian) beef curry

From 2008-food

I love Indian food, but I'm a little more wary of eating it out because I find I have a hard time making sure it's actually safe for me to eat--although most dishes should be fine. I regularly read the blog Tigers & Strawberries* and saw Barbara's post for "a nice beef curry" and knew I just had to try it. It came out really well and seems to be very freezable, so I'm sure I'll be making it again. It reminded me a little of rogan josh, a very rich, meaty sauce, a little creamy, very indulgent...for me it tasted like something I might get a restaurant (that's a good thing). I made it pretty much as written, with a few changes since I'm cooking for one person and I didn't have some of the ingredients at home. My notes:

• halving it turns out about 4 1 cup servings.
• substituted: 2% yogurt for whole milk yogurt, 1/4 cup Muir Glen tomato sauce for the 1/2 cup diced tomatoes, some dried ginger for fresh, and left out the fennel seeds and paprika since I didn't have any.
• Really, really have everything ready to go because you'll burn your seeds if you put them in and hope to quickly chop up the beef before the seeds pop.
  
• It's probably not the best idea, but I pureed the paste and onions in my coffee grinder because I didn't want to dirty another dish. Next time I might just add all the liquid, remove the meat, and use my hand blender.
• I needed to brown the meat in batches since my stove doesn't get super hot, and I didn't have a huge surface area.
• I cut the pieces smaller (closer to 3/4" cubes) which I liked. It was falling apart after about 2 hours of simmering. I had to add some water to thin the sauce.

*I love her blog. Pretty much every week I see something that I'm just dying to make.