As I may or may not have mentioned before, my other half’s family are a real mixed bag in terms of nationalities. Chinese, Indian, and South African to name but three. A veritable melting pot compared to my comparatively mundane ancestry.

As a result, my future mother in law, Connie, seems to be able to cook anything. From insane curries and whole fried Chinese fish, to cream horns and South African doughnuts. And the speed she does it at is mind blowing. Turn your back for 10 seconds and when you look back there’s a plate of food in front of you. Brilliant.

This recipe is for her quick lamb curry that I tried whilst over in Oz and she kindly wrote the recipe down for me. It’s very tasty, and also very easy. If you can get your lamb on the bone, so much the better as it’ll give your curry more flavour.

Ingredients

750g stewing lamb, diced

1 large onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, pounded

1 thumb sized piece of ginger, pounded

1/4 teaspoon tumeric

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon chilli powder

1 teaspoon garam masala

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 cinnamon stick

1 chilli, chopped

1/2 can tomatoes

1 can green lentils, drained

1 tablespoon chopped coriander

1 pinch of sugar

Salt to taste

Method

Get a thick bottomed pan on the heat and add a good couple of glugs of vegetable, rape seed or groundnut oil. When it’s good and hot, pop in all the dried spices and fry them off to release the aromatics. After a minute or so, add the chopped onion and fry off.

Whilst this is going on, roughly chop the onion and ginger, and pound in a pestle and mortar with a little salt until pasted. Add this to the onions and continue to fry. Next, chop the chilli and add it to the mix seeds and all, along with the cinnamon stick and curry leaves. Give a good stir and continue to fry.

Now wash the lamb in cold water, drain and then add to the pot. Lightly fry the outside of the meat, and when light brown add the half can of tomatoes, a pinch of sugar and the chopped coriander. Don’t worry about the curry going dry, the ingredients will give off enough moisture to keep the curry moist. Now stick a lid on it and simmer gently until the lamb is falling off the bone and tender, which should be around 45 minutes.

Take off the lid, add the drained green lentils to the curry, and bring up to the boil. And that’s pretty much it. Serve the curry with boiled Basmati rice and a simple raita made with yoghurt, cucumber, fresh mint and coriander.

Let’s just hope I did the recipe justice.

Tags: Chilli, Coriander, Cumin, Curry, Garam Massala, Garlic, Ginger, Green Lentils, Lamb, Onion, Rice, Tomato

This entry was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 at 8:03 pm and is filed under Dinner, Recipes, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.