Mutton Curries, by Brijraj (recipes)

Brijraj (pronounced "bridge-raj") was our guide in Jaipur. He recited these recipes as we jiggled and bumped over the dusty dirt road on our way back from Dera Amer, and I scribbled them down. Here's my best interpretation of what he said/what I wrote. Again, we haven't made these yet - I will update when we do.

Note "mutton" is widely used in Indian curries, together with chicken and seafood. The significant Muslim population, especially in the north, and the predominantly Hindu population throughout means that pork and beef are rarely served outside of western-oriented restaurants. Mutton may or may not be older sheep, it may also be goat, which is much more highly sought after (and flavoursome). Mutton is actually very difficult to get in Aus - most sheepmeat is lamb (less than 18mths old, generally), but most "lamb" in the US is mutton by Australian standards.

T = tablespoon (15ml in Aus, 20ml in US, ?? in India); t = teaspoon (5ml generally)

1. Chop 1 kg boneless mutton into pieces roughly 2" x 1" x 1/2". Pound or tenderise them.
2. Combine ½ kg plain unsweetened yoghurt with 5T garlic paste, 1T ginger paste, 4T onion paste, some salt, 3t red chilli powder and 1½t turmeric. (Paste ≠ minced. Here are links for garlic paste, ginger paste, and onion paste.)
3. Marinate the tenderised meat in the yoghurt mix for at least four hours.
4. Combine 10 cloves, 20 peppercorns, 15 green cardamoms, 5 black cardamoms and 4 large bay leaves.
5. Heat around ⅔ cup of your preferred cooking oil. [Peanut oil has a high smoke point - Ab]
6. Add the combined spices to the hot oil, and fry until they pop. Don't get burnt!
7. Add 4 finely diced medium sized onions to the oil & spices, and sauté until golden/translucent.
8. Next, add the marinated meat and yoghurt to the oil/onion/spices.
9. Cook over a high heat until the sauce thickens [Brijraj says experience will tell you how long, but when pushed, suggested ballpark half an hour.]
10. Once thickened, drop to a low heat, and cook until very thick and dry, and the oil separates out. [Ditto, but possibly in the order of an hour or so.] If it gets too dry and the meat still isn't tender, add a little water.
11. Shortly before the curry is ready, you need to prepare the garnish. Fry three diced onions until golden, then dry on absorbent paper to crisp.
12. To serve, transfer curry to a wide shallow plate. Sprinkle the crisped fried onions over the curry. Each spoonful of the curry should have the crisp onions with it. As a dry curry, I would probably serve this with roti/naan rather than rice.

This might be a cousin of Rogan Josh. Note that cows milk yoghurt may separate (unlike buffalo milk) - to reduce this you may choose to stir 1½t of cornstarch through the yoghurt first, per this site.

Brijraj offered an alternative recipe, based on the above, which adds a smoky flavour to it. It's after the jump.

Alternative recipe to above:
Prepare the curry as above, with the following modifications:

• Dice the mutton, roughly 1" cubes
• Add 5t coriander powder to the yoghurt marinade
• Omit the crisp onion garnish
• Smoke with cumin seeds just before serving.

To add the smoky flavour, you need a few new items. I don't know about you, but the first two items I will need to source specially, although I would expect them to be common place in most Indian kitchens.

• small metal bowl (like the small thali bowls, or a small mise-en-place metal bowl)
• a piece of coal/charcoal, burning red-hot
• generous pinch of cumin seeds (~½t)
• some melted butter or ghee, around 1T (this must be liquid)

1. Put the glowing charcoal into the metal bowl, and lower the metal bowl onto the surface of the dry cooked meat.
2. Put the cumin seeds on top of the charcoal, and IMMEDIATELY pour the melted butter over the charcoal, to put out the flame.
3. Very quickly, put the lid back on the pot, covering the meat, the bowl/charcoal/cumin/butter, and let rest for five minutes or so, to smoke the meat.
4. Remove the lid, remove the metal bowl and contents, stir the meat to mix the smoke flavour through, and then serve.