Sweet and Spiced Fried Beef (Empal Daging)

Two days ago I made this fried beef for our dinner. It reminds me of what I had at home in Indonesia before. Some people like it to be very very dry, meaning that you have to fry it a bit longer, but the consequence is it will look burnt and will get too hard the next day. As for me, I like it medium dry by frying it for a short period of time just to round up the aroma.

Ingredients:
- 500gr beef meat, cut into small chunks
- 8 cloves of garlic
- 8 cloves of small red onion
- 6 candle nuts
- 4cm of galangal
- 5 Indonesian bay leaves
- 1Tbsp of ground coriander
- 2 lemon grass, cut into 2cm in length
- 2 blocks of palm sugar, grate it
- 1 Tbsp of tamarind, dissolve it into 200ml water, use the juice
- salt
- water
- oil for frying


In a blender, blend garlic, onion, candle nuts, galangal, palm sugar, lemon grass with some tamarind juice until smooth. Place it in a pot. Add salt, coriander and bay leaves and stir it. Add some water just enough to cover all the meat. Add the meat and cook it until tender or at least 40minutes. Take out the meat, drain off the water and then fry it with oil under medium-high heat until change color. Serve it with warm steam rice and veggies.