Like Tuesday’s dinner of Pasta Godjabuda, I got the recipe for Kima–a dish I’ve never heard of that might have been made up–from the Best Of The Best From New York Cookbook (page 139). My wife’s a fan of Indian food and we have legit curry powder from her trip to Sri Lanka a few years back, so I figured this would be a good recipe to try. After hitting up the farmer’s market on Wednesday, I came home with fresh onions and some local ground beef, which wound up being frozen. Not a big deal, I’ve thawed and cooked meat like this before.
The dish is pretty simple, really. The first thing I did was get the basmanti rice going (I found a brown version at my local Hannaford), which is cooked like any other rice (water, oil and some salt in water with the rice, cover and simmer for 30-45 minutes). While that was going, I measured and combined the spices and got the block of ground beef in a warm pan. As that thawed and cooked (I broke the meat up with a spatula as it warmed up), I got to work on cutting the two onions up as well as the garlic. That went into another pan with some olive oil to cook. The beef and the onions were done at the same time, so I dumped the onion mix on top of the beef and then added the spices and mixed it all up. You then put the lid on and simmer for five minutes before mixing the tomato sauce in. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
The rice finished about 10 minutes before the meat, so I just fluffed it and left it on the stove. Once the meat was done cooking, it was meal time. I haven’t had a lot of Indian food in my life, but I liked this dish. It had some heat to it, but wasn’t overly spicy and the meat had a great curry taste. Next time I make this–and I will be making it again–I’ll pick up some naan and maybe figure out how to make a little yogurt sauce. My first foray into Indian cooking turned out really well and I hope to try a few more things in the future, though I might need to get some more of that good curry powder.
Pop Poppa 