Lapis Daging

Lapis daging is a dish made from beef, originally from East Java area. The meat is cut into thinly slices, simmer with spices  and cooked until it’s soft and tender.  It tastes sweet and savoury. My mother likes to cook it and combine with other dishes to make it tastes even better. Lapis Daging is also one of the dish that most served when someone is having celebrations in our neighbourhood, which we called as ‘nasi berkat’ or ‘sego banca’an’ (in Javanese language) which means the blessing rice.

Ingredients

500 g beef (any part for stew or steak) cut into thinly sliced

2 cm fresh ginger, smashed

2 cm fresh galangal, smashed (2 teaspoons galangal powder)

2 stalks of lemongrass

2 Indonesian Bay leaves (daun Salam) – if you don’t have it, you can skip it.

5 tablespoons of thick sweet soy sauce (kecap manis)

1 teaspoons of salt (or 1/2 cube of beef bouillon)

2 tablespoon palm sugar (gula jawa) or white sugar if you don’t have it

1/2 teaspoon pepper powder

1 litre of water

Spice Paste

6-7 shallot

4 cloves of garlic

3 candlenuts

1 tablespoon coriander seeds

1/4 teaspoon cumin

Directions

1. Grind or blend the spice paste.

2. Heat the oil in a wok and saute the spice paste, bay leaves, lemongrass, ginger and galangal for few minutes.

3. Add the meat and water, bring to boil then reduce the heat. Add sweet soy sauce, pepper powder, salt (or beef bouillon) and sugar. Cook until the sauce is thicken and the meat is soft and tender. Remove from the heat.

4. Serving suggestion : serve with steamed white rice, acar kuning, perkedel kentang, sambal bajak and prawn cracker (krupuk udang)