Riyandang

As tradition built it

Serves 6. Marinate 30 minutes, cook around 2 hours 30 minutes, total roughly 3 hours 15 minutes.

Ingredients

• 1 kg stewing beef or brisket, cubed

For the marinade

• 55 g jasmine rice, pan-toasted and coarsely pounded
• 1½ inch turmeric, thinly sliced
• 1 inch galangal, thinly sliced
• 2 stalks lemongrass, white part, thinly sliced
• 1 small red capsicum, sliced

For the palapa

• 1 inch ginger, thinly sliced
• 4 spring onions, white part, thinly sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 4 bird's eye chillies

To finish

• 90 g mature grated coconut, toasted separately
• 4 bay leaves
• 400 ml coconut milk
• 240 ml water
• 30 ml soy sauce
• to taste lime zest, salt

Method

1. Toast the rice and pound it coarsely; set aside.
2. Pound the palapa ingredients, the turmeric, galangal, lemongrass and small red capsicum, to a paste, then combine with the remaining marinade ingredients: the ginger, spring onions, garlic and bird's eye chillies.
3. Coat the beef in the spice mixture and rest 30 minutes.
4. Toast the grated coconut separately in a dry pan until golden brown.
5. Cook the marinated beef, covered, in an oiled pan or wok over medium heat, 15 minutes.
6. Add the bay leaves, coconut milk, water, soy sauce, toasted coconut and lime zest. Simmer on low heat 90 to 120 minutes, until the beef is tender.
7. Increase the heat and reduce the sauce; season with salt to finish.

Notes

Origin, deliberately not settled. Two accounts circulate for how rendang reached Lanao: one that an Indonesian scholar who married a Marawi local in the 1950s brought the recipe, another that Maranao Hajj pilgrims learned it from Indonesian pilgrims in Mecca. Both rest only on commercial recipe sites, not on any historical or academic source, and are given here as "Maranao home cooks say," not as settled history.

What a modern chef changes

A low, indirect Big Green Egg braise, with a dehydrated coconut sand to finish

Rungs 1 and 5

Method

1. Cook the braise low and indirect on the Big Green Egg rather than stovetop, for real smoke integration through the long reduction, closer to how a torogan's bantolang firebox would have flavoured a feast dish than a sealed pot ever gets.
2. Dehydrate a portion of the toasted coconut into a fine, crisp "sand" to finish the plate, contrasting texturally against the sauce's own silkiness.
3. Grind the palapa base in a high-power blender rather than by hand, for a finer, more homogenous paste that clings better to the beef during the initial browning stage.