Jolt Country

(adapted from "Classic 1000 Indian Recipes")

Ingredients
A pound and a half of lamb, plus or minus. Cheap fatty cuts are fine, but you'll need more of them: you want about a pound of lean meat when all is said and done.
1 T coriander seeds
1 T cumin seeds
1 T mustard seeds
1 in. cinnamon stick
1 t cardamom seeds
1 t peppercorns
1 t ground turmeric
1 t garam masala (buy or make, whichever)
a little salt
5 cloves
5 dried red chili peppers, or more to taste
2-3 inches ginger root, chopped
1 head garlic, peeled and chopped
2 onions, chopped
1 C white wine vinegar
1 14-oz can tomatoes: chopped, pureed, whatever
half a bunch of cilantro, roots removed, chopped
1C water
1 jalapeno, chopped

Preparation
If you feel like using pre-ground spices instead of whole spices, go ahead. It isn't as good, but it will still work. Same with buying versus making garam masala; if you have a particular blend you've made and like, use it, or if there's a particular brand you like, use it.

White wine vinegar is expensive, so if you prefer, use white vinegar cut with cheap white wine or dry vermouth.

Trim the lamb fat and meat from the bones. Toss the fat into a frying pan. Put the meat in a Ziploc bag. It's better for the fat to have a little meat on it than it is for the meat to have fat in it. I have an advantage here because my deep freeze is filled with low-quality fatty cuts of lamb. Cut the meat into half-to-one-inch cubes. Fry the fat for a long time over medium-low to medium heat, until you've pretty much rendered it. You'll have a bunch of liquid fat and some lamb rinds at that point. Fish out the lamb rinds with a slotted spoon and put them on a paper towel to drain. Salt and eat, or give them to the dogs, or throw away, or whatever. They can't be healthy, but they do taste really good.

Dry-roast the whole spices and chili peppers until they start smelling good. (You can do this while you're rendering the fat.) Grind them coarsely with a mortar and pestle--no need to get fascist about it, just crack all the seeds open. Add turmeric and salt to taste. Then toss the spice mix into a blender. Add the garlic and ginger and maybe an ounce of the vinegar to the blender, and blend into a paste.

Scoop the paste out of the blender and into the ziploc bag with the meat. Let the meat sit in the paste for as long as is practical. Overnight is ideal, but let's face it, you probably didn't plan that far in advance. It's still going to taste good even if this part is only thirty minutes or so. This is an ideal time to work on rendering the lamb fat, enjoying the greasy lamb rinds, and having a drink. Since this is Indian food, a gin and tonic is the perfect drink to make you feel like a colonial oppressor.

Once the fat is rendered and the rinds are out of it, heat the oil over medium-high heat. If it starts smoking it's too hot and turn it down. Now fry the onions in there until they're golden-brown. Add the lamb from the bag--don't throw it away yet--and fry for about 15 minutes, until the lamb is golden too. Stir in the tomatoes and keep on frying--at this point you're probably really boiling, because there's a lot of water in the tomatoes--until the water is pretty much absorbed or evaporated. Now, pour the wine vinegar into the Ziploc bag. Close it and shake it up so the remaining spice paste comes out when you dump the wine vinegar into the pan. Add 1 C water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low, cover, and have another drink while you wait 40 minutes or so.

After the meat is good and tender, take the pan off the heat, sprinkle the jalpeno, cilantro, and garam masala over it, and serve with rice. Chapatis are nice with this, and almost anything with potatoes or chickpeas works well too.

Bruce

The Curry Expert would recommend frying the lamb, then removing, then adding the jalapenos and the onion to the blender, rather than leaving them in their chopped form, and frying the onion/garlic/ginger/spice paste for several minutes, then putting the lamb back in and continuing with the recipe.

However, it's unlikely that Bruce's method will produce something completely inedible.

Curry Expert wrote:The Curry Expert would recommend frying the lamb, then removing, then adding the jalapenos and the onion to the blender, rather than leaving them in their chopped form, and frying the onion/garlic/ginger/spice paste for several minutes, then putting the lamb back in and continuing with the recipe.

I prefer having the jalapenos raw at the end of it, and I kind of like having onion bits rather than onion paste, although I care less about that. If you fry the lamb separately, you also have to pick it back <i>out</i> of the marinade, of course. You certainly don't want to fry it before putting it in the paste to marinate because then the meat will take much longer to absorb any of the flavor.

Bruce

Well, of course. What do you think Curry Expert is, a rookie?

Also, we would prefer to fry the lamb in small batches, allowing the moisture in the meat to come out and evaporate quickly, so one is frying rather than boiling.

That is what we would prefer.

Curry Expert wrote:Well, of course. What do you think Curry Expert is, a rookie?

Of course not. But much of our audience is less sophisticated when it comes to the culinary arts.

Curry Expert wrote:Also, we would prefer to fry the lamb in small batches, allowing the moisture in the meat to come out and evaporate quickly, so one is frying rather than boiling.

Well, if you say so, but there's plenty of room, I think, in a big cast-iron skillet (which, unlike a wok, for those of you playing along at home, is designed to hold the <i>living shit</i> out of heat) for a pound of lamb. I'll try it your way next time though and let you know how it comes out.

Bruce

P.S. Perhaps it is because of my heritage, but I absolutely adore my cast-iron Lodge cookware. It's incredibly cheap by comparison to my All-Clad pots, but for frying or for Dutch Oven cooking, there's nothing even <i>remotely close</i> to cast iron.

P.P.S. What heritage, I hear you ask. Well, I'll have you know that I'm a proud son of the Confederacy, and my native cuisine basically comes down to: "Kill or pick something. Bread it and fry it in lard until it gives up." Oddly, there are <i>some</i> things that are really quite tasty like this. Fried okra is one of the yummiest things in the world. I use a half-and-half corn meal and flour mixture for the breading. In fact, I feel a recipe coming on:

Fried Okra
A pound or so of okra, ends removed, and cut into half-inch slices.
1 C flour
1 C cornmeal
salt and pepper to taste
2 C milk.
1/4 C or so high-temperature oil (canonically, bacon grease or lard, but canola oil works, as probably does peanut oil; olive oil doesn't get hot enough)

Soak the okra in the milk in the fridge for a few hours.

Put the flour and cornmeal in a bag with the salt and pepper and shake it up so they are thoroughly mixed.

Start heating the oil, medium-high, in a heavy cast-iron skillet. You want it about french-fry hot.

Put the okra in the bag a little at a time and shake. Put the coated okra on a plate. When all the okra is done...

Fry it. Be careful here to not put too much okra in the skillet at once, because, as Curry Expert points out, you want to fry it, not boil it. Unlike the lamb, this stuff's gonna be really wet, seeing as how it's been soaking in milk for a while.

Repeat until all okra is fried. Add more oil between frying rounds if necessary.

Put on a paper towel to drain. If you're not eating immediately, shame on you, but put it in the oven at 200 degrees to keep warm.

Bruce

I dated a guy from the south, and the big holiday dinner family brawl topic was between his mother and grandmother about whether okra should be fried in flour OR cornmeal. I don't think you're allowed to compromise on this issue. I found myself behind cornmeal lines, myself.

Vitriola wrote:I dated a guy from the south, and the big holiday dinner family brawl topic was between his mother and grandmother about whether okra should be fried in flour OR cornmeal. I don't think you're allowed to compromise on this issue. I found myself behind cornmeal lines, myself.

Shouldn't you have fried one batch in each and then held a secret ballot to determine which was the winner? It's the way <i>my</i> family would have done such things.

Well, as a second choice after "12-gauge shotguns at four paces," that is.

Bruce

Curry Expert wrote:The Curry Expert would recommend frying the lamb, then removing, then adding the jalapenos and the onion to the blender, rather than leaving them in their chopped form, and frying the onion/garlic/ginger/spice paste for several minutes, then putting the lamb back in and continuing with the recipe.

Tried it. Really didn't produce a discernable difference, I'm sorry to say. By the time everything has simmered long enough, the lamb is very tender and tasty whichever way you do it.

Bruce