Sri Lankan Curry

I had a culinary success today.
I used to cook a lot, but now I can manage it once a week or every two weeks.
Today was easier than I thought, since I divided the tasks and worked on things no longer than about 10 minutes at a time. I am so glad to have my little kitchen stool on wheels, it makes many things possible, including the best batch of curry I've ever made.

A large part of the success was due to the silver packet of Seasoned Pioneers brand Sri Lankan Curry Powder Lynn gave me a while back. This stuff is GOOD people.

I started by slicing up 5 smallish yellow onions into skinny wedges, and plopping them into the dutch oven (a cast iron cooking pot) with some olive oil. To that I added a lot of pre-chopped garlic, maybe 1/2 a cup, and a largish apple peeled and chopped into roughly 1 inch cubes.
When all that had cooked to soft and slightly brown, I removed it, and added a 1/2 pound skirt steak; chopped into fairly small strips, to the oil still in the pot.
When that had browned quite well, I sprinkled a good 2 Tablespoons of dry basil on it (I would have used fresh, if we had any) and 2-3 Tablespoons of the curry powder mentioned above. By now, the kitchen smelled pretty darned good.
After that had cooked for about 10 minutes, letting the spices bloom in the heat and oil, I added back in the previously cooked onion, garlic and apple, and a little salt to help the juices come out to play.

Then I added 5 medium potatoes, chopped into roughly 1.5 inch cubes, a slug of soy sauce (maybe 3 Tablespoons) and 3 cups of water.

I let that all cook together getting all happy and family-like while I used the rice cooker to prepare some jasmine rice. When the curry was looking thick and yummy (maybe 40 minutes) it was done.

I was going to add some green beans at the last, but it was smelling so good I totally forgot about it in my eagerness to get some in my bowl and belly.

(image nabbed by googleing 'sri lankan market')