Wow. What a dish, for so many reasons!!!!!

Firstly, this was my first attempt at making this curry. The flavours are amazing. Most of the work goes into making the paste (roux), that’s as hard as it gets!!! The paste is surprisingly good, especially as it’s made with grated apple !!! Yes you’ve read that right. I’ll explain fully below. The Japanese make lots of curries but usually from shop bought pastes which they buy in kits, these kits are available also in UK supermarkets. This recipe shows and explains how to make the paste. Also used a lot within Japanese curries are chopped carrots and diced potatoes, so using leftover Sunday roast meat was almost lost having a full Sunday roast within a curry! Heaven !

Secondly, this was the third dish made from Sundays roast leg of lamb leftovers. I was gutted with how much I paid for this leg which was supposedly on ‘offer’ in Sainsbury’s. So basically I’ve had to get my monies worth.

On Sunday it was roasted with garlic & rosemary and seasoned well. The garlic and rosemary were placed into small incisions along the leg. It was roasted above onions and carrots which were then smashed up to become the base of my gravy with the roasting tray catching all the juices.

The leg was roasted for about 2 hours.

We had the traditional Sunday roast with all the usuals – roast potatoes, roast parsnips, veg etc….

On Tuesday evening I took some of the remaining lamb, placed it in a small roasting tin and covered it with the leftover minted gravy. Placed this in the oven to heat through.

Whilst this was bubbling away in the oven I made wholegrain mustard mashed potato along with cooking off tender stem broccoli, beans and carrots….the minted gravy and lamb was insane.

Now, this Japanese curry recipe and most Japanese curries use chicken, because I had a quantity of lamb left over and the curry used carrots and potatoes I just thought I’d try and put it all together – Sunday roast curry. It was amazing!!!

Most of the work goes into making the paste which is very easy, the paste is a roux which will thicken the dish as it cooks out. The rest just happens. The dish takes about 30 minutes to make and it’s so tasty it’s worth a try.

Ingredients for the paste (roux)

2 tbsp of unsalted butter, 2 tbsp of plain flour, 1 heaped tbsp of curry powder, 1 tsp of garam masala, 1 tsp of paprika, 2 tbsp of light soy sauce, 1 tbsp of rice wine vinegar, 1 apple grated and then blitzed with a hand blender & 4 tbsp of chicken stock (however I did add slightly more to loosen the paste a little)

For the curry –

2 tbsp of rapeseed oil, 1 onion finely diced, 1 potato peeled and cut into very small cubes, 1 carrot diced, your meat and 1 litre of chicken stock.

Method –

To start, melt your butter in a pan which I love as the butter smells all nutty. once it’s melted add the plain flour.

Mix this around the pan and it will naturally change colour and thicken a little.

As the roux becomes beige in colour add in your powdered spices – garam masala, curry powder and paprika

Mix the spices around the pan. The roux will instantly darken.

Add the soy sauce and the rice wine vinegar.

Follow this by adding the chicken stock and mix well.

Add in the apple mix. Mix the pan well. At this stage I actually added a little more chicken stock to loosen the roux (paste).

A little more stock added.

Mix the pan well. As the stock thicken slightly and looks like a paste remove from the heat into a bowl. Be careful not to over cook it, if you do it will become too thick.

Clean the pan down ready for the cooking of the curry.

Heat the rapeseed oil. Once hot add your chopped onions and fry for four minutes or so until they become nice and translucent and smelling great.

Add in the potato cubes frying for about 5 minutes. Make sure you stir occasionally as the potatoes will stick.

Add your chopped carrots. Cook the dish until the potatoes are almost cooked, this should take another 10 minutes or so. Again, make sure you stir the pan.

At this stage you would add your raw meat and cook this out for longer. However, as my lamb was already cooked I just wanted to warm it through.

Again, if you were using raw meat you’d brown off the meat before adding the paste. However, I added the paste straight away.

Add some your chicken stock to loosen the paste. A little at a time. Mix the pan. The paste (roux) will do its job and thicken the curry.

Keep adding your stock. To be honest I didn’t add all my stock as I didn’t want the dish that wet.

Sadly, at this point I forgot to take anymore photos.

I know I’ve mentioned it a few times but the dish tasted so good….what could be better than a roast in a curry ??

Heavenly. I can see this dish being repeated over and over using left over meat.

If you’ve read my ramblings thank you. At the minute the cooking and writing is helping.

Thank you 🙏

Again, credit goes to Dan Toombs. Legend.