Kare-kare

Ingredients

• Oxtail — in pieces1.5 kg
• Peanut butter — unsweetened250 g
• Rice — to toast and grind60 g
• Annatto seeds2 tbsp
• Onions2
• Garlic6 clove
• Aubergines2
• Yard-long beans200 g
• Bok choy300 g
• Banana blossom — optional200 g
• Bagoong shrimp paste — to serve150 g
• Vegetable oil60 ml
• Rice — to serve400 g

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Simmer the oxtail in water for three hours on a low heat, skimming. Keep the broth.

   190 min

2. 2

   Toast the rice in a dry pan until brown and grind it to a fine powder.

   15 min

3. 3

   Warm the annatto seeds in oil for three minutes and strain it; the coloured oil is where the dish gets its colour.

   6 min

4. 4

   Fry the onion and garlic in the annatto oil, add the peanut butter and let it down with broth.

   12 min

5. 5

   Stir in the rice powder and cook the sauce fifteen minutes, stirring, to the body of soured cream.

   17 min

6. 6

   Return the oxtail to the sauce and warm it ten minutes so the meat takes it up.

   12 min

7. 7

   Blanch the vegetables separately until just tender, lay them over the meat and serve with rice and bagoong.

   15 min

About the dish

The sauce is deliberately unsalted. The salt comes from bagoong, the fermented shrimp paste added at the bowl to taste. A salted kare-kare with bagoong would be inedible.

The oxtail simmers three hours, until the meat comes away from the bone. There is no quicker route: the collagen in a tail breaks down only under long gentle heat.

The sauce is thickened with ground toasted rice as well as peanut. The rice gives it a velvet body and keeps it from splitting; without it the sauce turns grainy.

Worth knowing

• — The vegetables are cooked separately and laid on top. Boiled in the sauce they stain orange and lose both look and flavour.
• — The peanut butter must be unsweetened. A sweet one turns kare-kare into a dessert sauce, and bagoong does not go with it at all.
• — The sauce thickens a great deal on cooling. Reheat with broth and stir constantly; peanut catches instantly.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

820 kcal

Protein

44 g

Fat

50 g

Carbs

48 g

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