Ed's english beef curry

1. You need to marinade the beef for about 6 hours before you use it. To do this put the beef in a bowl and cover with the cider vinegar and balsamic vinegar and a pinch of salt. The acid starts to break down the fibres in the beef and will give you a more tender end product. When the beef has marinaded for 6 hours you need to construct the curry paste.

2. Put all of the dry ingredients in a suitable mixing bowl and add everything apart from the oil, butter, onion, peppers, bay leaves, beef, yoghurt and tomatoes. Mix this together until you have a rough paste.

3. Fry your onion in the butter and oil until soft and then add the peppers (you need a big pot which has a lid). Continue cooking until the peppers are beginning to soften.

4. Add your paste to the onions and peppers and cook for about 2 minutes stirring continuously so it doesn't burn (this is my favourite part as all the spices give off a terrific aroma!).

5. It's now time to add the beef cubes so rinse the vinegar marinade off and add them to the pot. Let the beef cook for about five minutes in the thick sauce. It's important to keep stirring as the sauce will burn if you're not careful.

6. You now need to add about a pint of boiling water, stir it in, add the bay leaves and let it reduce on high heat. Put the oven on at 160 to heat up while it is reducing.

7. Once the curry has reduced to the point where it has quite a thick sauce, take it off the heat, put the lid on and put it in the oven for about an hour and a half. At this point, take it out of the oven and add the tomatoes. Put it back in the oven for another hour or until the meat is "falling apart" tender.

8. Once the meat is tender, take the curry out of the oven and leave to rest for five minutes. Once rested, stir in about a tablespoon of yoghurt and serve with the rest of the yoghurt (for people to cool it down if it's too hot) and some whole coriander leaves (and of course a cold beer!).