Kare-Kare (Peanut Butter Stew)

Visiting my parents over the holidays means that I was able to get some more oxtail. Last time I made some sumptuous oxtail soup, but I wanted to try something different this time, so I turned to the Goons with Spoons wiki and decided that kare-kare sounded like an excellent choice.

Kare-Kare
1/4 c. oil (or bacon grease)
1 oxtail (~1 1/2 lbs.)
1 lb. stewing beef
salt and pepper
1 Tbsp. annatto seeds
4-6 cloves garlic, minced
2 small yellow onions, sliced
generous 1/4 c. short-grain white rice (or sticky rice), toasted and ground
scant 1 c. crunchy peanut butter (preferably a "natural" peanut butter)

2 Tbsp. fish sauce
2 Chinese eggplants, peeled and cubed
1/4 c. garlic oil
1 bundle yard-long beans, trimmed and cut into 2cm lengths
4 heads Shanghai bok choy, cut into bit-sized pieces
lime (optional)
shrimp paste (optional)

1. Season the meat with salt and pepper and brown in batches in the oil.
2. Remove the meat from the pot, reduce heat to medium-low, and add the annatto seeds. Simmer in the hot oil until it turns a deep, rich reddish-orange. Remove and discard the seeds, retaining the coloured oil.
3. Turn the heat back up to medium and add the garlic. Cook until the garlic is browned, but not burnt. Immediately add the onion.
4. Once the onion has softened, return the meat to the pot and add 5 c. water.
5. Combine the toasted rice flour with 1 c. water to make a slurry and stir that into the pot as well.
6. Stir in the peanut butter and the fish sauce.
7. Reduce heat to low and simmer for at least three hours. (Mine simmered for a little over four hours.)
8. Remove the oxtail and discard the bones. Return the meat to the pot.
9. Fry the eggplant in the garlic oil until it begins to brown and add to the pot.
10. If there's any oil left in the wok after frying the eggplant, the beans can be given a quick fry. If not, they're perfectly fine to go in raw.
11. Add the bok choy to the pot. Stir to combine and cook over medium heat until the bok choy has just wilted.
12. Serve over rice with lime and shrimp paste.

We had lemons on hand, so I actually squeezed a bit of lemon juice into my stew. However, I think lime would be even better. If you want to do it properly, you should actually mix equal parts lime (or calamansi) juice and shrimp paste and take a little bit on the tip of your spoon with each bite of stew. I wasn't feeling the shrimp paste when we made this, so I just used a bit of lime juice, but I might try some with the leftovers tonight.

I deviated from the Goons with Spoons recipe in a few places, but I'm still pleased with the results. I didn't have enough oxtail on hand to do an all tail version, so I threw in a package of stew meat to make up the difference. It came out meltingly tender and wonderful!

The original also doesn't call for frying the eggplant, but I sometimes have texture issues with eggplant and find that frying goes a long way to alleviating this, so I figured it was worth adding a step. If you're a great lover of eggplant and aren't worried about textural weirdness then, by all means, skip the frying and let it do all its cooking in the stew!