This my curry lovers is a beautiful dish. A completely different way to cooking your British restaurant/ takeaway favourite. Your restaurant/ takeaway classic flavours are built up and use a base sauce, this dish has two steps using the same pan and the flavours come from a wonderful mix of spices and reusing the stock the lamb is cooked in.

My Fridays always used to be about a homemade curry, a few bottles of cold cobra then settle down to watch Gogglebox. I used to do this as it was my perfect method of shutting off from work. Flipping from work mode to home mode. Due to recent events this hasn’t been done for a while.

Please don’t be put off by the ingredients below, this dish from scratch takes about 40 minutes to make. 10 minutes of prep and 30 minutes of cooking. It’s well worth it. Simple, one pan cooking for all ❤️

Ingredients

Part 1 – cooking the meat.

1 tbsp of rapeseed oil, about 700g of lamb meat preferably leg meat off the bone, small stick of cinnamon, 3 green cardamom pods slightly bruised, 2 cloves, 1/2 tsp of cumin, 1/2 tsp of coriander, 1 tsp of paprika, 1 onion peeled and cut into quarters, 3 cups of water.

Part 2 – the sauce.

4 tbsp of rapeseed oil, 2 onions finely diced, 2 tbsp of garlic & ginger paste, 2 1/2 tbsp of paprika, 1 tsp of Kashmiri chilli powder, 1 1/2 tbsp of curry powder or madras powder, 1/2 tsp of cumin powder, 1/2 tsp of coriander powder, small handful of cashew nuts, 1/2 tin of chopped tomatoes, stock from cooking the lamb, 2 tomatoes cut into quarters, 3 tbsp of natural yogurt, 1 tsp of dried fenugreek leaves, 1 tsp of garam masala, 3 tbsp of chopped coriander, a nice pinch of salt and chopped red onion to serve.

Method

Part 1 – the meat.

Add the rapeseed oil to a large pan. Once hot add your lamb and brown the meat which should only take a few minutes.

Then add everything to the dish – the whole spices, the cumin, coriander and paprika powders, the onion and the 3 cups of water.

Bring this to a simmer. Simmer the stock for around 15 minutes. Once the lamb is nice and tender pass the stock and meat through a sieve. Pick out the onion and whole spices leaving the meat and a bowl and your stock from cooking. Keep this stock as it’s part of the cooking process for the sauce.

You should be left with a stock looking like this –

Right…now to the quick and fun bit about making this dish.

Wipe the same pan clean making sure you have nothing left inside it from the lamb stock.

Heat the 4 tbsp of rapeseed oil. Once the oil is hot add in your diced onion and fry for 5 minutes until it’s nice and translucent.

After 5 minutes add in the garlic & ginger paste, mix well and fry for 30 seconds.

Follow this with the dried spices and cashew nuts – paprika, chilli powder, curry powder, cumin powder, coriander powder, and cashew nuts.

Give this a good stir. At this point your kitchen will smell amazing ❤️

Add the chopped tomatoes and 1//2 a cup of the reserved lamb cooking stock.

Give this a good mix then remove from the heat.

Using a hand blender blitz everything in the pan making a beautiful thick flavoursome sauce.

Add in another cup of the reserved lamb stock, bring this to a simmer and add back in your lamb.

The sauce will start to thicken. Add in your chopped tomatoes and simmer for another 2 minutes.

Add in the dried fenugreek and garam masala. Too be honest, I always add in more dried fenugreek as I love it.

Add in your natural yogurt, a tbsp at a time mixing it through the dish.

This will give you and nice velvet like sauce.

To finish the dish, a nice pinch of sea salt, finely diced chopped red onion and coriander.

I served mine steamed basmati rice.

Thank you for reading my ramblings if you have that is.

Usually at this time on a Saturday morning (7am) I’d be cooking my dishes for family and friends so fill that void I just thought I’d write up what I cooked last night.

This recipe was inspired by Dan Toombs. Legend.