Red Lamb Curry

Whenever my parents go to India, I send them on excursions to bring something back for me. Sometimes it's a tiffin, sometimes it's a pashmina. Last year I asked for English-language cookery books specialising in Kerala's cuisines.

They returned with three thin shopworn paperbacks by someone only named as "Mrs. K. M. Mathew." The books really didn't elaborate on her life--she edited a woman's magazine and became a cookery writer. Wikipedia added a tiny bit more information.

Naturally, her recipes do remind me of My Dear Little Cardamummy's. Mind you, I can see Mum making mental notes to "fix" them. I'll probably take the books over and ask her for suggestions as to make them...like how she would make them. She will, of course, say that she doesn't know or say something like "oh...it needs some...you know...(name spice) but not too much." No one cooks quite like Mum...

This Easter I decided to cook a number of curries, and turned to Mrs. Mathew's Flavours of the Spice Coast for inspiration. The curry was tasty and easy to prepare.

Don't let the two teaspoons of ground chillies it calls for scare you off--there is a bit of a zing, but it doesn't scorch the tastebuds. You can, of course, reduce the quantity, but I'd recommend serving it with a cooling raita, made of sour cream, cucumbers, onions, salt and pepper.

Red Lamb Curry
Adapted from Mrs. KM Mathew's Mutton Red Curry recipe found in Flavours of the Spice Coast.

Serves six

Ingredients

For the Masala
1dpsn (2tsp/10ml) ground chilli
0.75tsp (3.75ml) coriander seeds
0.5tsp (2.5ml) black mustard seeds
0.5tsp (2.5ml) cumin seeds

0.25tsp (1.25ml) whole black peppercorns

0.25tsp (1.25ml) fenugreek seeds

2.5cm (1") ginger, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
1Tbsp (15ml) vinegar

3-4Tbsp (45-60ml) flavourless oil
2 onions, sliced into thin lunettes
2 tomatoes, finely chopped
750g (1.5lbs) lamb, cut into bite-sized cubes
0.75tsp (3.75ml) salt
500ml (2c) water

Method:
To make the masala paste,
Put the coriander, mustard, cumin, peppercorns and fenugreek in a frying pan, over medium heat. Stir occasionally as the seeds colour. When they begin to scent the air, remove from the pan and let cool on a saucer. When cooled, add to a mortar and pestle or grinder and grind with the ginger, garlic and vinegar, to a smooth paste, then set aside.

To make the curry,
In a heavy-bottomed pan, heat the oil over medium heat until shimmery. Add the onions and saute until golden. Stir in the tomatoes and the masala paste and cook for a few minutes. Turn down the heat to medium-low until the water evaporates and the oil begins to rise to the surface.

Tip in the lamb and add the salt, and mix well in the spicy tomatoey mixture, to coat the meat. Add enough water to cover the meat (you may need more or less than then 500ml called for). Stir well. Turn up the heat to medium and stir occasionally until it boils. Lid the pot and let boil for about five minutes.

Turn down the heat to a simmer, remove the lid, stir and reduce the liquid until the gravy thickens and clings to the pieces of lamb. Balance flavours to taste. When done, the The lamb should be fork-tender.

Serve over rice, with a dry veggie curry.

Notes:

• If you use an electric spice grinder, make sure it's one that can handle liquids.
• I prefer meat curries with a thick gravy that clings to each piece of meat, which means it could blurble away, scenting your kitchen for a good while. Of course, if you want a thinner gravy, you it doesn't need to simmer as long. Mind you, if you want a thick gravy, but don't want a terribly long blurble, you can simply let it cook down over medium or medium-high heat).

cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

You say "potato," I say "potato"

As a run-up to Mmm...Canada, this week's posts will feature Canadian foods and food products. Today's post uses Yukon Gold potatoes.

I can't remember who included Lets Call The Whole Thing Off in his stand-up routine, but I still smile when I think of it. Instead of the usual "You say potato, I say potaeto/You say tomato, I say tomaeto," he sang "You say potato, I say potato/you say tomato, I say tomato"...tee hee...okay...maybe you had to be there.

I'm a bit of a potato freak. As someone who grew up with rice at every evening meal, I saw potatoes as something wonderful and special. I know there are others who see things exactly opposite to me and yawn at potatoes but are very pleased to see a little mound of rice on their plate. That's fine...you can have your rice, I'll have my potatoes, please.

Mashed, boiled, roasted, fried, baked, rosti...I love it all. And for me, Yukon gold is king. Unfortunately, it's getting harder and harder for me to find my favourite potato in the bigscarymegamart or even the mediumscarymegamart. In fact, I'm finding it difficult to find varietals at all. It seems as if the store's (or maybe the potato marketing board, if there is a beast) marketers see fit to just call them white potatoes, red potatoes, or this newfangled "yellow flesh" potatoes.

On the weekend a friend asked about Yukon golds and the stock boy told him that yellow flesh are the same as Yukon gold and he had no idea why the name change.

My guess is they're going to be switching over to a cheaper, less harmoniously sounding spud so it's easier to call them by a generic name, but still charge YGP prices

Smarmketers. (Oh wait, was that me being snarky? Just a tad...it's been a day).

Anyway...

When I made the lamb curry I decided to forego the rice and make Aloo Gobi--a potato and cauliflower dish spiced with cumin and coriander. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough cauliflower on hand. A quick check of the fridge proffered the last leaves of my Chinese cabbage, but not enough to substitute for the caulifower in my recipe....so used up the Chinese leaf and topped up on cauliflower.

The flavours and textures work well together--the potatoes are soft and yielding and the cauliflower has a bit of crunch and the cabbage...well...the cabbage is cabbagey. The dish itself is cumminy and slightly zingy from the pepper. Plus the turmeric tinges the potatoes and the cauliflower with happy. What more could you want?

I don't have a name for this dish...so for now I'm going to be more than a tad boring...and obvious. If you can come up with a better name, let me know...

Potatoes, Cabbage and Cauliflower
oil
¾ tsp black mustard seeds
½ tsp cumin seeds
½ onion, sliced

400g potatoes, in 1cm cubes and boiled until tender in salty water
2c julienned cabbage
2c cauliflower florets
1½ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp tumeric
¼ chilli pepper powder
1½ tsp salt

Putting it together

1. Heat oil over medium heat. Add mustard and cumin seeds and toast until the mustard seeds begin to pop (you might want to lid the pot...or you could just live dangerously...it's up to you). Add the onions and fry until golden and soft.


2. Add cauliflower and stiry for a few minutes--basically heat it through. Tip in the cabbage shreds and then the potatoes. Add the coriander, turmeric, chilli pepper and salt. Stir again and add a spoonful of water and give everything a good stir so that the potatoes and cauliflower take on the tumeric's yellow. Season to taste.

cheers!
jasmine

Time for a curry I'm happy with

As a run-up to Mmm...Canada,this week's posts will feature Canadian foods and food products. Today's post uses Ontario Lamb.

You know how sometimes...just sometimes...you eat a food that leaves you so unsatisfied that you know you have to make it yourself just to prove that there can be a good version of it...somewhere?

My most recent example of this was inspired by June's Milk Calendar Monday offering. Yes. I know, I know...in certain circles even mentioning that something doesn't taste good because it really doesn't have a passing resemblance to the food its supposed to be is a no-no, since it shrieks not only of an honest knowledge of that food, but also schmecks of foodish elitism.

But you know...sometimes a rendition is just plain, old...bad...and shouldn't be recommended or replicated. This is how I feel about a couple of recipes in this calendar (the "curry" and the jambalaya)

I've posted a couple of chicken curries on this blog...the mild vanilla kurma and my (dare I say successful) attempt at butter chicken. This time I wanted something different and--thanks to a great price reduction on a boned leg of lamb--I found it.

Normally I stick to chicken or veggie curries, so this one was a bit of a departure for me. My Dear Little Mummy's (whom I'm thinking of renaming My Dear Little Cardamummy) mutton curries are quite good, but she doesn't make them very often--they are dry (as opposed to swathed in gravy) coconutty and gingery. I wasn't really in the mood for that sort of curry, so I checked out a few recipes and came up with my own variant...it's part rogan josh, part something I can't remember and part something I saw on Meena's site.

Like all good curries I've had (and I'll add this to the list) this one does not come together in 30 minutes, nor is it constrained by a maximum number of ingredients, assisted greatly by a jar of pre-made stuff. It takes a certain amount of time, but I think for something like this, it's time well invested.

This is a saucy curry-chunks of tender lamb blanketed in a tomatoey gravy. There are little spikes of heat, thanks to the green chilli pepper and the ground chilli peppers and the ginger.

I served some to the same friend who tried the other "curry" and he much preferred it to the Dairy peoples' one ("I thought it was really good. It was what a lamb curry should be.")

Beforewarned: this is a first-time made and straight to the blog concoction, so it's bound to benefit from some tweaking...if you try it, please let me know...

Lamb Curry
750g lamb, cubed into 2.5 cm pieces
oil
6 green cardamom pods--seeds only, ground
4 whole cloves
10 whole peppercorns
1 5cm shard of cinnamon
1 bay leaf
1½ onions, sliced
3 Tbsp hot garlic and ginger paste, made of

• 1 Tbsp minced ginger


• 1 Tbsp minced garlic


• 1 green minced chilli pepper

375ml chopped tomatoes (tinned or fresh)
1½ Tbsp tomato paste
1 175g pot of plain yoghurt
125ml water

Masala--grind together the following and set aside:
1 tsp coriander seed
1 tsp cumin seed
1 Tbsp paprika
1 tsp chilli pepper powder
1½ tsp salt

Putting it together

1. Take about a spoon's worth of the masala and sprinkle it over the meat cubes. Let sit for at least an hour, or overnight.


2. Over a medium flame, heat the oil until it shimmers. Brown the meat in batches and remove to an awaiting dish.


3. Add the cardamom, cloves, peppercorns, cumin seeds, cinnamon shard and bay leaf to the oil; stir and fry until the spices' aromas begin to waft and the bay leaf changes colour. Add the onions and fry until soft and golden.


4. Add the garlic and chili paste. Stir for about a minute or so and then add the rest of the masala and fry while stirring for about a minute or so.


5. Tip in the meat and its juices, along with the tomatoes, paste and water. Stir well. Ad the yoghurt and stir. Increase the flame to medium-high and bring the pot to a boil. Turn down the heat, cover and let the pot simmer and blurble for about 45 minutes (stirring every once in a while), or until the meat is nice and tender.


6. Taste the gravy at about the 30 minute point to check for seasoning. Adjust to your palate.


7. Remove the lid, give it a good stir and turn up the flame to medium. Stir constantly while allowing the gravy to reduce so it's thick, velvety and wants to cling to each piece of meat.

Note:

• Don't trim all the fat off the meat. It adds flavour, and well...flavour.

cheers!
jasmine

Hatful of butter chicken

Inspiration arrives in various and unexpected forms. But I must admit, I scratched my head at it's latest chariot.

It's no secret, music can fling me to my kitchen, and urge me to come up with something new or different from my norm. Jann Arden's Cinnamon Buns is such a dish, but in that case, she talked about pastries during the concert.

In no way would or could I call myself a hardcore fan, but every time I hear The Smiths on the radio, the volume mysteriously increases and immediately transports me to a happy place (yes, I am proudly an Alternative fan). But I have no idea why, this time, How Soon Is Now? sent me head first into butter chicken during one of Morrissey's "I am human and I need to be loved/just like everybody else does" ..but it did.

And no, I'm not going to enter into a discourse about shallower and deeper meanings held by its lyrics, though I do think those 14 words ring true to most people at one point or another. I just think it's fairly safe to say it has nothing to to with chicken, curry or chicken curry.

So...I've got a hankering for butter chicken (or murgh makhani)...but I don't know what it's "supposed to" taste like, so I really can't go with taste memory (only what I don't want it to taste like). My Dear Little Mummy doesn't cook it. My forays into trying it have left me unsatisfied: a frozen dinner, and a dump and heat sauce. I could tell what the instafood manufacturers were unsuccessfully trying to do when they created cheap, fast and inoffensive foodstuffs, but when the instructions are to heat the meat and the sauce separately before tossing everything together just before serving, you know you've got something that may as well be Chicken McNuggets dumped in Bollywouldn't sauce.

I called my parents (fyi: jackfruits keep falling on Mum's head, which I'm sure will be her excuse for shrinking in height just that much more) and asked Mum about butter chicken. After a not-so-quick conversation, which centred on her intense dislike of many things dairy I think I began to figure things out.

The first is the yoghurt. Several recipes called for it to marinate the meat, but Western plain yoghurt is creamy and just slightly sweet in comparison to my mother's yoghurt, which is just as thick, but a bit more sour. The taste is closer to fresher buttermilk, crossed with old (but not yet expired) sour cream.

Most recipes I've seen use tandoori chicken and then put it into a sauce, or use a doctored garam masala for the chicken. Well...I know if I have tandoori chicken, I'll probably eat it as is and only have scraps left for the butter chicken...which might as well be called "butter scraps." Garam masala is fine if you can't get the individual spices to come up with your own flavouring...but, the best Indian dishes I've had centre around specially-made masala..and let's face it, I'm feeling creative.

I'm not after "perfectly authentic" because, apart from not having a decent reference point, I don't think there is a right way to make butter chicken. I just wanted something that was slightly sweet, on this side of tangy, and flavourfully spicy. I also wanted to make it something my Mum would eat (she balked at the cream I mentioned, so I've given up the decorative pour). I came up with this dish and I think it's a keeper.

Murgh Makahni (Butter Chicken)
Serves 6

Ingredients
2 Tbsp masala, untoasted and ground finely, made from:

• 2 Tbsp coriander seed
• 1 Dspn (two teaspoons) fenugreek
• 1 tsp black peppercorn
• 1 ¾ tsp chili pepper flakes
• ¼ tsp turmeric
• 2 cloves
• seeds from 1 fat cardamom pod

1kg chicken thighs, skinned and bones removed, cut into bite-sized pieces
250ml sour cream mixed with buttermilk
4Tbsp garlic and ginger paste, divided (see note)
juice of half a lemon
1 globe onion, chopped
unsalted butter and oil, for frying onions
156ml can of tomato paste, mixed with enough water to make one cup
1Tbsp muscavado sugar
a thumb of minced ginger
a handful of chopped coriander leaf

In a zippy bag, mix together the sour cream, half the ground masala, half the ginger and garlic paste, and lemon juice, adding as much salt as you wish. Give it a good squoosh to thoroughly mix the marinade, before adding the chicken. Seal the bag and squoosh again, this time to thoroughly coat the meat. Let marinate for about an hour--but don’t go too much longer otherwise you risk woolly chicken.

Preheat the oven to 150C/300F and bake the chicken for about 20 minutes, then turn off the oven and let the chicken sit in the oven for 10 minutes…which is approximately how long you’ll need to fry the onions. The meat will be partially cooked, which is okay, because you will finish cooking it on the hob.

Over a medium flame, heat the butter and the oil together and fry the onions for about eight or nine minutes, or until the onions are soft and caramelised. Add the remaining garlic and ginger paste and fry for another minute. Tip in the partially cooked meat and any yoghurty liquid that has collected in the pan, followed by the tomato paste and water. Cover and simmer for about five minutes. Stir in the sugar and let blurble away, partially covered until the gravy thickens – about 15 minutes. You aren’t looking for islands of meat in a sea of thickened tomatoey soup but instead chicken that’s swathed in a thick burnished sauce. Adjust seasoning to taste.

While it’s thickening, toast the remaining masala in a dry pan until the essential oils release.

When the chicken is ready, take it off the heat and add the toasted spices, coriander leaf and minced ginger.

Notes:

• Left over masala can be stored for a few months in an airtight jar.
• If you cannot grind your own spices for this, then substitute 1½ Tbsp garam masala mixed with ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
• Garlic and ginger paste: grate and mix together equal parts garlic and ginger. This can be made in quantity and then frozen in an ice cube tray and kept in the fridge for future use.
  

cheers!
jasmine