Fiery North Indian lamb Curry
By: Anshu Verma
Published: Thursday, January 5, 2012 - 10:34am

Ingredients




Ingredients
1.5 kg of lamb
2 tablespoon of Oil
3 bayleaves
1 small onion chopped
Salt to taste
1 teaspoon of garam masala
Chopped coriander
For the masala
4 cloves of garlic
1 medium onion
2 inch piece of ginger
1 teaspoon of whole cumin
1 teaspoon of whole coriander
1 teaspoon of turmeric
1 teaspoon of chilli powder
3 cloves
3 green cardamoms
3-4 peppercorns

Preparation

1 Marinade the lamb with a pinch of turmeric and salt. Keep it aside. This enables the meat to season properly. 2 Now prepare the masala. Chop the onions, garlic and ginger. Mix all the masala ingredients in a jar and grind them together. Chop another small onion for frying. 3 Heat a deep pan. Add the two spoonfuls of Oil to it. Add the bayleaves and the chopped onion to the oil. Let the onion brown. Then add the ground masala and commence the bhuno process. Fry the masala at a medium heat until such time the masala is fragrant and you can see the oil oozing from the masala. 4 Add the mrinaded lamb to the masala and continue to fry the meat until brown. You will notice that the lamb exudes water initially. Keep frying until all the water is dried up and the meat is thoroughly marinaded with masala. This entire process takes about 10-15 minutes. 5 Add 2 cups of water to the lamb. Let the water come to a boil, lower the heat and let it cook with occasional stirring. 6 Lamb will take about 1 .5 hrs to cook and become tender. 7 When the lamb curry is ready, add a teaspoon of garam masala. Garnish it with chopped coriander. 8 Serve with fragrant rice.

About

Preparing lamb curry in our home used to be a mission on sundays. Meat used to be cooked once a week, especially on Sundays, purely for the reasons of convenience and luxury. Meat curry had to be cooked when you had plenty of time i,e on a holiday.  In India you need to make a trip to the butchers shop early morning on Sundays, if you wish to get fresh meat. As far as I can remember only men used to go to buy meat. In India, the popular meat is the goat meat which generally takes a long time to cook, 4 -5 hrs is normal.
However, this is not the case in Britain. Lamb meat is available in all the supermarkets and Indian shops. Always use lamb with bones. North Indian curry makes use of ground spices. Fresh ginger, garlic, onions and all the whole spices crushed together provides the exquisite taste. In Northern India, especially in the Bihar Region, we do not use tomatoes in the lamb curry. The curry is meant to be fiery and spicy.
Serves – 4
Preparation time – 10 mins
Cooking time – 1.5 hr