Indian Saturday #1: Rogan josh

On Saturday night I went what I can only describe as mental and decided to knock up a couple of Indian dishes for Charlotte and myself.

First up is rogan josh from Anjum Anand’s Anjum’s New Indian.

The list of ingredients looks incredibly long (especially when you’re wondering around Waitrose with an A4 shopping list) but when it comes to cooking it actually doesn’t seem too bad.

750g of lamb or mutton, cut into chunks
3 or 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1 blade of mace
7 black peppercorns
3 cloves
2 black cardamom pods
5 green cardamom pods (I could only find green ones so used 7 of those)
5cm of a cinnamon stick
A large onion
2 medium tomatoes
12g of fresh ginger
6 large cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons of ground fennel seeds
2 teaspoons of ground coriander
1 teaspoon of red chilli powder
2 teaspoons of ground cumin
1 and a half teaspoons of garam masala
A pinch of salt
3 tablespoons of natural yoghurt
Fresh coriander

It won’t come as a shock to anyone that even with a bit of prep I managed to miss out the cloves and put all the spices in at the wrong time. Charlotte hit the nail on the head when she said “It’s not the best curry I’ve ever had but it’s still tasty.” I’d say that as she ate her body weight it must have been okay but by the time I served it up she was hungry enough to have eaten it off the floor had I dropped it.

So you have the ginger and garlic mix to hand while you’re cooking I’d do this before you start.
Chop the garlic and throw it in a blender and add the peeled and chopped ginger. Keep the chunks quite big or they’ll get lost under the blades like mine did. Add a slosh of water and whiz until you have a paste.

The tomatoes need to be puréed so I’d suggest using tinned ones. I was using fresh, uncooked and unskinned tomatoes at it wasn’t half a job. The 1980s kitchen equipment came out (with the usual story from my mother about how it’s older than me… maybe) and the tomatoes got ineffectively schmooshed in a bowl. They then went through a sieve but somehow there were still strips of skin in there. This wasn’t end of the world but strangely enough it’s probably better to do it properly.

Put both of these to one side and heat the oil in a large non-stick pan. Throw in the peppercorns, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and the mace. The recipe very clearly says ‘add the whole spices’ but I, in my true village idiot style, put all the spices in. Fry the spices until they sizzle and then add the onion. Cook this until it’s browned and then add the lamb, stirring until it’s also browned all over.

Pour in the garlic and ginger and lower the heat. Stir it about for a couple of minutes and the garlic should start smelling like it’s cooked. In goes the ground coriander, cumin, fennel, chilli powder, salt and garam masala. Stir this for just under a minute.

I couldn’t find any powdered fennel so Charlotte was given my make-shift pestle and mortar (plastic bowl, rolling pin) and told to crush away.

After the last of the spices go in add the tomatoes and turn the heat up. This then cooks for fifteen minutes and needs stirred once in a while. If it starts to dry up too fast add a splash of hot water.

After the fifteen minutes mine was still quite watery. I’m not sure it should be as the recipe says ‘add enough water to come halfway up the meat’ but never mind. Bring the curry to the boil and then turn the heat down quite low. Simmer for around 35-45 minutes until the meat is lovely and tender. The liquid should reduce into a thick gravy. Stir in the yoghurt before bringing back to the boil. Remove it from the heat, mix in a handful of roughly chopped coriander and serve.

Plain and simple lamb stew

This is the world’s most bog-standard stewy/casserole thing and while I realise that it sounds very plain and boring it’s actually rather tasty and great to just pull out of the fridge to heat up after a long day.

I usually use leg stakes as they’re just really easy but my favourite thing about stew is you can chuck absolutely anything in and it doesn’t matter.

Sooo…
Lamb
Carrots
New potatoes
An onion
Garlic
Lamb stock
Herbs of your choice (because I’m generous like that)

Heat the oven at 150°c and roughly chop up half an onion and three cloves of garlic. If, like me, you love the stuff - or you’re just worried about Dracula touching you up in your sleep - shove in a bit more. Though if you’re like me after a glass of cava and just want anyone to touch you up at all use a bit less. Either way brown these quite well in a pan and throw them in a casserole dish.

Handy tip that may not work: I weirdly find that if I wash my hands in cold water rather than hot the smell of garlic pretty much disappears rather than lingering around for the next three weeks.

Cut the lamb in to biggish chunks and brown these in the pan really well too.

Round the carrots and half the new potatoes and these go in the casserole dish with everything else.

I only use a small amount of water when I dissolve the stock cube as the meat seems to be tenderer if there’s less liquid. This goes in the casserole dish with the herbs and then the whole thing goes in the oven for three or four hours.

I tend to put the lid on my casserole dish askew so that there’s a bit of a gap. It doesn’t seem to dry up but the lamb seems softer and the whole thing a bit thicker.

Roast lamb for idiots.

The weekend before Christmas I was invited to an early, not very festive lunch - which I cooked. I was supposed to only be doing a pudding (which I’m clearly an old hand at) but our elected chef cancelled a few days before. I stood up and decided to take the main-course bullet. “I’ll get the take-away menus out then” joked our host and oh! how we laughed. Until I threatened to lynch his pug. Which surprisingly wasn’t a euphemism.

I decided to cook slow roasted lamb, roast potatoes and veg with pigs in blankets. I know they’re supposed to go with chicken but they really are my favourite bit of Christmas. I spend weeks desperately waiting for December to start so I can start wrapping pigs in pigs. They just don’t taste as good at any other time of year.

I popped to the meat counter in Waitrose because I couldn’t make it to the butchers and got a shoulder of lamb as I really can’t stand fatty meat. My old flat mate used to love having a fry up with me as I’d spend five minutes carefully cutting all the fat off my bacon which I then dunked on his plate.

I’ll admit I bought ready-made pigs in blankets but they’re very easy to make. I think small, plain sausages are best, with smoked streaky bacon. If you wrap a sprig of rosemary with the sausage it gives them quite a nice flavour. The Waitrose website has quite a good recipe for a honey, Tabasco and bourbon glaze. You mix two tablespoons of bourbon, 10 drops of Tabasco and four tablespoons of clear honey together and you’re done. And a bit drunk.

Maris Piper potatoes are one of the best for roasting as they’re waxy. There’s a very good reason this is good but I can’t for the life of me remember it. Par boil the potatoes for ten minutes in slightly salty water (science bit: salt makes the cells break up quicker which helps the crunch factor). If you swish them around in a colander it roughens the surface giving you more crunchy bits. Some people dust potatoes in flour to help them stay crisp when they’re out of the oven. I’ve never bothered with anything like that as mine are usually in my tummy before they have a chance to soften.

While I pre-heated an oven at 150°c, though it might have been 180°c as all the numbers had worn off the dial, I used a knife to poke some holes through the lamb – while gleefully pretending to stab a tiny little person - which I then stuffed with quarter of a clove of garlic and a lot of rosemary. I did this after having a little cry about the blood that was in the packaging with the lamb. God, I really am suited to this cooking lark.

I then wrapped the lamb in some tin foil and stuck it in the oven for an hour. After a few very limey cosmos I unwrapped the meat and stuck the potatoes in for another hour and a half. If you turn them half way through this stops the bottom sticking to the baking tray and gives you more crispy bits.

Anyway in the words of someone doing a really rubbish Jamie Oliver impression: bish bash bosh, all done, pukka me old china. Laaaahvly!