British friend who now lives in Australia: "I'd walk home for that!"

It may look a bit boring on its own, but when you think that it starts as a shed-load of beige-looking coconut milk and cooks down to tius beautiful, shiny mahogany-coloured thing of beauty!

This is adapted from Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook

In fact it's a combination of two recipes and the final twist is venison.

Try to get hold of this wonderful book if you can, but if not, the two recipes are "Rendang" and "Rendang Daging". I won't reproduce them here as I've blended and changed them anyway, but Rendang is more or less like this: You coat the meat, brown it and then make the curry. Rendang daging is a recipe where you fry the belnded mixture, add coconut milk and everything except the tamarind and add the meat raw.

So, I've used the method from Rendang and a blend of ingredients that looks more like Rendang Daging.

I bought some venison and had to change the recipe again.

Directions (Beef or Lamb)

Put the chopped onion, garlic and ginger in a blender with enough thin cocnut milk to make the blender work

Mix the ground spices together and add to the meat with the blended mixture and leave it aside

Heat 1 tblsp oil in a large saucepan and fry the fennel and cumin for 30 seconds then fry the sliced onion until it starts to brown

Add the spiced meat and fry it until it changes colour

Add the remaining spices and the thin coconut milk and salt and simmer for as many hours as it takes to go nearly dry

Add the last tin of coconut milk and reduce again until it's nearly dry.

Ingredients (Beef or Lamb)

• 2lb braising steak cut into rough chunks (lamb shoulder is lovely too)
• 1 tsp each of cumin seeds and fennel seeds
• 1 onion sliced
• 1 onion chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 tblsp chopped ginger
• 1 stick of cinnamon
• 5 whole cloves
• 3 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground black or white pepper
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 2 tins cocnut milk and the same amount of water (This is just called thin cocnut milk)
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 tblsp tamarind paste
• 1 tin cocnut milk

Venison

There are only a few variations here. Diced venison instead of beef or lamb, obviously, but things that go with venison include juniper. There's something about the piney gentle bitterness of juniper that, like rosemary or tart fruit, really goes with venison and I suppose there is no reason not to simply put those in. I chose star anise instead and addedd a little bit of turmeric for an extra hit of bitterness.