I take my hat off to Jamie Oliver. I’ve never tried a recipe of his where I wasn’t pleased with the outcome. His first book, The Naked Chef, has to be one of the most useful cookery books available. It’s worth the price of admission for the bread and pasta recipes alone. The curry recipes in Jamie’s latest books do tend to use ready-made curry pastes for speed and convenience. Nothing wrong with that, of course, I just prefer to make a ruby from scratch.
This recipe is extremely good, worthy of Camelia Panjabi herself. It’s adapted from his second book, “Return of the Naked Chef”. I thought it looked interesting and was tempted enough to try it last weekend. It’s quite similar to the base lamb curry I normally use, so I thought I’d adapt my own recipe to include Jamie’s “fragrant spice mix”. I’ve upped the amount of green cardamom in the recipe, as I love the flavour so much. The whole spices are toasted in a dry frying pan before being finely ground and added to the curry. I also cook the entire dish in the oven rather than cooking the lamb on the hob. It requires less babysitting, as I can just throw the casserole in the oven and forget about it.
Serve with some pilau rice and naan bread. Jamie recommends adding paneer to the curry, a type of Indian cottage cheese. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Jamie Oliver recipe without a final flourish of “fresh ‘erbs”, would it?
Masala Ingredients
- 2 tbsp fennel seeds
- 2 tbsp coriander seeds
- 2 tbsp cumin seeds
- ½ tbsp fenugreek seeds
- ½ tbsp black peppercorns
- 1 clove
- small piece of cinnamon stick
- 10 green cardamoms
Curry Paste Ingredients
- thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled
- 2 large red onions, peeled
- 10 cloves garlic, peeled
- 2 red chillies
The Other Ingredients
- fresh coriander & fresh mint
- 2 tablespoons butter/oil
- 2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
- 300ml stock
- 1.5kg lamb, diced
- fresh mint, handful
- fresh coriander, handful
- 300ml natural yoghurt
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
- lime juice
- salt and black pepper
Method
- Toast the whole spices for a minute or two in a dry frying pan until they release their aroma. Transfer to a spice grinder (or mortar) and leave to cool. Grind to a fine powder and set aside.
- Put the curry paste ingredients in a blender and process until you get a smooth paste. Add a little water if you wish.
- Heat a large casserole and add the oil/butter. Gently fry the curry paste and ground spices, stirring regularly. Add the tomatoes and the stock and bring to the boil. Cover the casserole with a lid and place in the oven for one and a half hours to intensify the flavour.
- Fry the lamb pieces in the oil until coloured before adding to the curry sauce. Return the casserole to the oven and cook for around 2 hours or until the lamb is tender.
- Stir in the chopped fresh coriander and mint, then stir in the yoghurt. Season to taste with some freshly ground black pepper and some lime juice.
Serves 6.
Notes
- If you’d like take try some different curry recipes, I’d recommend my South Indian Lamb Curry as a good starting point. After that, try your hand at these!
This is a really special recipe, for those who like putting a bit of love (and time) into their curry-making. The spicing is different to my standard Kashmiri Lamb Rogan Josh recipe because it doesn’t use any shortcuts. I don’t use a lot of pre-ground spice here - I toast the cumin, coriander, fennel, peppercorns and cloves before grinding and adding to the gravy. I use authentic Kashmiri chillies for both their flavour and deep red colour. I use shanks of lamb because traditional Rogan Josh is slow-cooked with the meat bones, giving a very deep flavour and rich consistency. It would make a fantastic dinner party dish.
I also use a whopping 25 green cardamoms in this recipe - no, it’s not a mistake! I love the flavour of cardamom and it’s certainly pushed centre-stage in this recipe. Removing the seeds from the green husk is a bit of “pullaver”, but it’s worth the effort. You could add a little saffron, as it’s very traditional in Rogan Josh, but I find the flavour tends to dominate and I don’t want anything to interfere the other spices. A traditional Rogan Josh will also normally include some yoghurt but I prefer it without as I don’t want a creamy consistency in my RJ. Give it a try, it’s the best curry you’ll ever taste.
Ingredients
- 4-6 lamb shanks
- 2 tbsp sunflower/groundnut oil
- knob of butter
- 500g onions, chopped (about 3 large onions)
- 8 cloves garlic, peeled
- thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and chopped roughly
- 25 green cardamoms
- 1 tbsp each of the following: coriander seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds
- 2 tsp black peppercorns
- 2-inch piece of cinnamon (broken into small shards)
- 5 cloves
- 500g tomato passata
- 500ml water
- 1½ tsp sea salt
- 1 tbsp Kashmiri chili powder (if you can’t find this, replace with 1½ tsp regular chili powder and 2 tsp sweet paprika)
- 3 whole dried Kashmiri chilies
- 2 large black cardamom pods
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp garam masala (optional, but make sure it’s homemade!)
Method
- Pre-heat the oven to 160°C.
- Crush the green cardamoms using a mortar and pestle. Separate the black seeds from the green husk and discard the husk.
- Using a dry frying-pan, carefully toast the cardamom seeds, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, peppercorns, cloves and cinnamon shards. Keep the seeds moving in the pan, taking care not to burn them. You’ll know they’re done when they start to release a heady aroma. Transfer to a spice/coffee grinder (or a mortar and pestle) and allow to cool.
- Grind the toasted spices to a fine powder.
- Place a cast-iron casserole on the hob and heat the oil and butter. Add the lamb shanks and turn until golden on all sides. Remove the shanks using a slotted spoon and set aside.
- Add the onions to the residual oil in the casserole and cook gently for around 30 minutes until soft and light brown in colour. Add the garlic and ginger and for another two minutes.
- Remove the browned onion mixture from the casserole using a slotted spoon and add to a blender. Add a little water and blend until very smooth.
- Put the casserole back on the heat. Add the onion/garlic mixture to the casserole, then add the ground spices, chilli powder, whole dried chillies, black cardamom pods, bay leaves. Fry for a minute before adding the tomato passata and the water. Stir well to combine before returning the lamb shanks to the gravy, along with any juices that have collected. Transfer to the oven and cook for about 3 hours until the meat is very tender, almost falling off the bone.
- Before serving, you can spoon off some of the fat which has risen to the top of the sauce, if you wish. You can add a little garam masala to taste also. Best served with plain basmati rice or a Kashmiri pilaff.
Serves 4-6.
Notes
- Of course, you could use good quality stewing lamb in place of the lamb shanks. Use 1.2kg of leg/shoulder and follow the instructions in the Kashmiri Lamb Rogan Josh recipe.
- This recipe requires a very smooth gravy. For this reason, I’d recommend investing in an electric spice (coffee) grinder. But a mortar and pestle will work well too - it just requires more effort to get a finer textured masala.
Ok, first of all: “Irish Stew”, in the traditional sense, is never made with beef and it does not involve Guinness! (See here for a delicious Beef & Guinness Stew.) Traditional Irish Stew is the most simple of dishes, consisting of lamb, vegetables, stock and little more. It’s a perfect example of how good quality ingredients can taste amazing when cooked very simply. Some purists might baulk at the idea of putting carrots and thyme in an Irish stew but that’s my version. Give it a try.
I roasted a shoulder of lamb recently and got it together to make an excellent stock from the bones, which I then put in the freezer for later use. Lamb stock has quite a strong flavour and is not as “all-purpose” as chicken or beef stock; it is generally used only in lamb dishes. The stock is well worth the effort and you can use it as a base for this stew. If you don’t have any, just use light chicken stock.
Serve with some soda bread on the side.
Ingredients
- 12 small lamb chops ( I used loin chops, you could also use an equivalent amount of neck or gigot chops)
- 10 medium sized potatoes, halved
- 4 sticks celery, quartered
- 4 large carrots, washed but unpeeled and quartered
- 1 litre lamb or chicken stock
- 2 tbsp pearl barley
- 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves, finely chopped
- salt & freshly ground black pepper
Method
- Trim some of the excess fat from the chops. Melt the fat in a large cast-iron casserole and add the chops. Fry until golden and reserve. Por the fat out of the casserole and de-glaze with some of the stock.
- Place all of the ingredients in the casserole, then top up with water to just cover the meat and veggies. Season with salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper.
- Cover the casserole, bring to a gentle simmer and leave for 1½ - 2 hours. Check the seasoning and add some chopped fresh parsley.
Serves 4.
Leftovers
- If treated right, leftovers can be more impressive than the original meal. To the leftovers of this stew I added 500ml of hot vegetable stock and whizzed with a stick blender. I added some frozen peas, broad beans and some chopped flat-leaf parsley. The results were superb.
This recipe is more or less Rick Stein’s Lamb & Spinach Karahi recipe, but I’ve simplified the recipe slightly and radically adjusted the amount of ghee/oil required. There is absolutely no sense in using 250g pure fat simply to fry half a kilo of onions. It’s crazy!
I’ve also added some dried fenugreek - it gives a great background flavour and is so typical of Indian curries.
As well as having a great flavour, this curry has a vivid green colour and makes a great visual contrast to “red” curries such as Kashmiri Lamb Rogan Josh or Butter Chicken.
Ingredients
- 1.2kg diced lamb
- 2-3 tbsp sunflower/groundnut oil
- 500g onions, chopped (about 3 large onions)
- 12 cloves garlic, peeled
- 50g root ginger, peeled and chopped roughly (about the size of a golf ball)
- 400g canned tomatoes
- 500ml chicken stock
- 2 tsp sea salt
- 1 tbsp each of the following: red chilli powder, sweet paprika, ground coriander, turmeric, garam masala, dried fenugreek leaves (kasoori methi)
- 300g spinach leaves
- 4 medium-sized green chillies, stalks removed & roughly chopped
Method
- Place a cast-iron casserole on the hob and heat the oil. Add the onions and cook the onions gently for around 30 minutes until soft and light brown in colour.
- Blitz the garlic, root ginger, tomatoes and water in a blender until smooth. Remove the browned onions from the casserole using a slotted spoon and add to the blender. Blend again until very smooth.
- Put the casserole back on the heat. Add the onion/tomato mixture to the casserole, then add the diced lamb, chicken stock and the ground spices. Stir to combine. Transfer to the oven and cook for 2-2½ hours until the meat is very tender.
- Just before the lamb is finished cooking, make the spinach puree. Put 200g of the spinach leaves in a large saucepan along with a splash of water. Place a lid on the saucepan and cook for about 2 minutes or until the spinach has wilted down. Transfer the spinach to a liquidizer along with another splash of water and blend until smooth. Set aside.
- Make the green chilli pureé. Blend the green chillies with some water until smooth and add to the curry. Set aside.
- Check the lamb is cooked to your satisfaction. At this point, you can spoon off the fat which has risen to the top of the sauce (see below). Stir through the spinach puree and the rest of the spinach leaves. Add the green chilli puree and simmer and heat through for another 5 minutes.
- Stir through the garam masala and fresh coriander. Taste for seasoning, adding plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Serve with rice and naan bread with some cooling yoghurt on the side, if you wish.
Serves 6.
