This another dish that I’ve had chance to experiment with due to finishing work early for Christmas. Again the dish has been taken from Madhur Jaffrey’s ‘Curry Easy’ cook book.

When the dish is served in the Rajasthan desert region of India, its colour, comes mainly from the hot ground chillies as its fiery red! This dish has been modified to remove quite a lot of heat which is replaced with cayenne pepper and paprika which again gives it its vibrant red colour.

I did make a mistake with the dish though. Whilst the recipe said it’s required lamb shoulder which is what I picked up….sadly I didn’t notice mine was on the bone! However due to the slow cooking of the lamb it did fall off the bone.

As per the name of the book, I really liked the simplicity of the dish which has been stripped back so people like me can get your head around what’s required.

Ingredients-

4 tbsp of rapeseed oil, 2 small cinnamon sticks, 6 cloves, 10 cardamom pods, 1 red onion finely diced, 1 heaped tbsp of garlic and ginger paste, 1 tbsp of ground coriander, 900g of stewing steak ( shoulder), 1 1/2 tsp of salt, 1 tsp of cayenne pepper, 2 tbsp of paprika and a large handful of coriander finely chopped.

Method-

Put the oil in a large heavy based pan, when visibly hot add the cinnamon sticks, cloves & cardamom pods letting the spices sizzle for 30 seconds or so.

Add the onion and fry until it’s reddish-brown.

Add the ginger & garlic paste…..quickly followed by the ground coriander.

Stir this together for a minute.

Add the salt, cayenne pepper & paprika….

Followed by the lamb. Whilst I did purchase lamb on the bone I also picked up some neck fillet for the dish as I wanted two different meat textures in the dish.

Give the whole dish a good stir coating all the meat with the contents of the pan. Stir for 3 to 4 minutes. Cover the dish with a litre of water. Bring to the boil. Turn the heat down slightly, cover and simmer for 1 hour 10 minutes. This process tenderises the meat taking the lamb to another level.

In India you would serve this with a vegetable dish, something containing green beans or aubergines and breads to soak up the stock.

As I’d already cooked the whitebait previously I just served mine up with a naan bread again to soak up the flavoured stock. Serve with the chopped coriander.

Thank you for reading my ramblings. At times I genuinely feel like I’m wasting my time writing this but after a good conversation with a dear friend on Christmas Day I’ve been encouraged to continue.

Thank you 🙏