Beef and aubergine hotpot with quince
I’m trying to reduce our food waste by not letting anything spoil, so tonight’s dinner was the reduce of googling “aubergine and beef”, because we had some aubergine needed using up our The Christmas Farm meatbox contained are beef cut for stirfry. Th recipe called for 6 kaffir lime leaves which I didn’t have so I swapped in a quince from the bush outside.
This doesn’t have to be done in an InstantPot, replace the pressure cooking with an hour in the over at 180 or so.
You will need
- 200g of diced beef (this look like shin)
- 2 medium sized aubergine, sliced lengthwise into 6
- 2 red chillis
- 3 star anise
- About 50g of crystalised ginger, dice diced
- A couple of centimeters of cinnamon
- A quince, quartered and cored
- Half a cup of soy
- A tablespoon of fish sauce
- A tablespoon of hoisin
- A tablespoon of honey
- A tablespoon of oil
Do
- Pop the beef and oil in the InstantPot on saute high
- Once it’s almost finished browning add the star anise and cinnamon and sizzle for another minute or so
- Add the rest of the ingredients, and give it all a good bubble for another couple of minutes
- Pop the InstantPot on pressure cooker mode at high pressure for 15 minutes
- Leave it to cool and depressurise on it’s own
- If needed run it on saute for a few minutes to reduce to the right consistency.
Result
I served this with some nutty black rice that photographs very badly but is delicious. The aubergine cooks down to a velvet texture, the beef falls to bits, the spices are rich and sweet.
A good blob of Lao Gan Ma didn’t go a miss. Terrible photos, it was a bit dark.
