Quorn rendang curry

One of the things I love about London is that pretty much any cuisine I want to explore is accessible. Some of these cuisines became regular features on my home-cooking menu such as Malaysian recipes with their fresh and sprightly flavours of lemongrass, chillies and lime leaves. Over the years I have read about the fusion of cultures that influences Malaysian cooking; Malays, Chinese, Indian and apparently even Portuguese and Dutch, and for me this makes it such a testament to the success that fusion food can deliver.

I am shameless when it comes to slurping up bowls of fragrant laksa, but the dish that has always made me most curious is rendang curry. I think it is the thick, clinging curry sauce that just makes me swoon for vegetarian alternatives to the traditional heavy meat-based versions of this recipe. The curry gravy reaches thrilling levels of wonderfulness when simmered for around an hour, making it unsuitable for vegetable-based dishes, but Quorn works well in that it just becomes tender and soaks up the flavours of the curry base over this time.

I haven’t added brown sugar, palm sugar or other sweeteners to this recipe, but what I have done is add tamarind paste and powdered some toasted coconut to give a little touch of sweetness. It has taken me about three attempts to get to a rendang recipe that I am happy with and I have to say, this one is just divine. I have served it with a really easy and colourful carrot salad and steaming hot rice.