There are quite a lot of beef dishes in indonesian cooking that use coconut milk. Also it's fairly common to cook the milk down to make it split and then fry meat in the oil. Many Thai curries start like that.
Rendang is a delight.
here's the recipe I use
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Rendang Daging
beef, main dish, oriental
3 inch cube fresh galangal
2 stalks fresh lemon grass
6 ea dried hot red chilies
2 inch stick cinnamon
12 ea cloves
4 oz red pepper
3 1/2 oz shallots or onions
1 inch cube fresh ginger
8 cloves garlic
12 ea curry leaves
8 ea kaffir lime leaves
2 3/4 pint coconut milk
2 lb stewing beef; cut into 4-5 cm cubes
Peel and coarsely chop galangal, cut off straw like top of lemon grass,
remove outer tough layer and crush what's left. Crumble red chilies and
cinnamon into water (to cover), plus cloves. Peel and coarsely chop
shallots/onions, red pepper, ginger and garlic. Put into an electric
blender and blend until smooth. (Food processor will work but you may have
to add some cooking oil to keep it off the sides).
Take the resulting paste, lemon grass, curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves
and put into a wide non stick pan (or wok or anything really) with the
coconut milk (stir first to get all of it out of the can). Bring to the
boil, stirring occasionally. Turn heat to medium and cook sauce for 15
minutes. Stir now and again to prevent curdling. Put in the meat (and salt
if you like), bring to the boil, lower heat and simmer for an hour,
stirring from time to time. Turn up the heat from medium to high and
continue to cook, stirring from time to time for 30 minutes or until the
sauce is very thick and brown and the meat is tender. (If the sauce begins
to splatter too much cover loosely. At this stage the dish is called
KALIYO. To make RENDANG stir and cook until the sauce has disappeared.
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