Today for dinner is my left-over lamb curry.
Last night it was the Becky’s favourite, Roast lamb with dauphinois potatoes and green beans. The shoulder of lamb (under a tenner from William Rose) gave us second helpings last night, and plenty enough for dinner tonight (and probably lunch tomorrow for me).
I have made this quite a few times now and it is always packed with flavour and very satisfying. This one was no exception, and Becky said “Ganapati standard” - compliments don’t come much higher than that.
Ingredients:
- 1 large white onion
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 1 carton of chopped tomatoes
- Various spices from the shelf
- 4 tomatoes
- Half a red pepper
- 8 mushrooms
- 4 small red chillies
The spices I used today are: coriander seeds (2 teaspoons), fennel seeds (2 teaspoons), mustard seeds (an amount), some cardamon pods (about 8), some cloves (about 12), 4 bay leaves from the garden, some cinnamon bark (from India), 4 or so star anise, some powdered ginger*, turmeric, and perhaps some others that I can’t think of right now. My general attitude towards spices is chuck in a bit of whatever I have and it usually tastes ok.
* fresh ginger is of course preferable, grated and cooked in with the garlic.
Method:
Finely chop the onion and gently fry it in oil until soft. Crush and chop and mince the garlic, then sprinkle with salt and mash with the side of the knife (for some reason I always do it this way instead of using a crusher, I think a tv chef told me to do so, or something). Stir the garlic paste into the onions and cook for a few minutes.
In a dry frying pan I toasted the spices I didn’t want to either remove or eat whole. I like to remove the cardamons, star anise, cloves and bay leaves from the dish before serving. I like to eat whole the mustard seeds as they look nice and are small enough to be inoffensive. The coriander seeds and fennel seeds are a bit to big and strong to eat whole so I toast them until they start popping and then grind them to powder in a pestle and mortar.
Now all the spices go into the onion, with a bit of water for an infuse. Then in went the tomatoes, pepper and mushrooms (in large chunks) followed by the carton of chopped tomatoes. That is stirred and left to bubble away on a low heat while I start to man-handle the lamb carcass!
I chop all the meat off the carcass in as large a lumps as possible, then strip as much of the fat off as I can. As it is a shoulder, there is loads! I get rid of all the tough or nasty looking bits, and chop the rest up into nice bite-sized chunks and whack it in the pot with everything else.
Then simmer gently for as long as you like really, stirring occasionally to make sure it isn’t burning. I cooked this one for maybe an hour and a half, or perhaps 2 hours - lost track. Doesn’t really matter. I guess eventually everything will go to mush so I just keep an eye on it. Cooked some rice, served by filling a small bowl then turning out onto the plate and ladling the curry around it. Served with Greek yoghurt and Mamma Geeta’s mango chutney (very nice, sold in Sainsbury’s).