After 5 days of eating very little, I woke up this morning with a ravenous appetite. I didn’t have to think much about what I wanted to eat. CURRY! I had some lamb in the fridge, so lamb curry it would be.
Back home, we use mutton, and honestly, I prefer mutton curry as it has a better taste combined with curry. I prefer my lamb grilled. But I can’t get mutton here, and even lamb is not so easy to come by, not to mention pricey.
Actually, strictly speaking, this is not a curry. To me, a curry is when you have abundant “gravy”, the sort you can drench your rice with. This is more of a peratal as it is drier than a curry, but still with some wetness to it. And then you have the varuval. That would be a really dry dish but very yummy nonetheless.
I remember seeing mama making this dish countless times, and it seemed simple enough. But once I got to Italy, I somehow starting cooking more Chinese and Western food, and somehow, I kinda forgot how to make mutton curry.
Some months back, I started having a craving for curry again, and I pestered my little sister over MSN to ask mama for the recipe. I received it in a MS Word document, and it was in true mama style:
5 biji small onion
1 star anise
3 biji buah pelaga
…. when the thing got popping sound, put in……
or
….when got nice smell already, put in…..
I am quite proud of how “mixed” we are in that sense, cooking Indian/Chinese/Malay food using English and Malay terminology. We’re special like that 😉
Though I used lamb, I will always refer to it as mutton, so here’s Mama’s Mutton Curry
Ingredients
500g mutton/lamb
5 shallots
5 cloves garlic
1 big onion
1 green chili
1 sprig curry leaf
1 star anise
2 cm cinnamon
3 cloves
3 cardamoms
2 cm ginger
1 tomato, sliced into 6
2 potatoes, quartered
3 tbsp oil
Method
1. Slice onion, shallots, garlic. Julienne ginger.
2. Heat up oil in a pot.
3. When oil is hot, add in cinnamon, star anise, clove and cardamom.
4. When the ingredients start to pop, put in the curry leaf, onion, ginger, chili.
5. Fry till ingredients turn soft and yields a nice smell.
6. Add in the mutton, add salt and cover.
7. Cook on slow fire until the liquids are released from the meat
8. Simmer for 15 minutes but check constantly. It burns easily!
9. If liquid in pot has dried up, add in a little more just to barely cover the meat.
10. When liquids have come to a boil, add in tomato and potatoes.
11. Cook until potatoes and meat are tender.
12. Add in curry powder, mix well and let it simmer for another 5 minutes.
13. Check constantly and mix as it may burn. Add salt to taste.
14. Serve with hot rice.
Best eaten with fingers, coupled with Indian soup, rasam. Absolutely delicious.
stomach ok ady la??
WJ: Obviously la. Woke up suddenly craving for MEAT! 😛
Aw…. Italian lamb curry (the lamb is Italian no?).
Thanks for visiting me…. you live in Italy? *swoon*..
Lucky you… although I can imagine how tough it would be to get some of the things you need to make Malaysian dishes, but I think after a while, you’ll be a genious in inovating. 🙂
My eldest daugther, Zara, loves cheese, loves pasta, loves pizza, and we kept telling her, she has to get married to an Italian (so that mummy and daddy can get free trips there too). Hope you are enjoying yourself there. 🙂
WJ: Hehe, no, no, dont tell Zara that! Italian men are too “smooth” 😛 Yes, thanks, am enjoying life here, but then again, there are of course two sides to the coin 😉
Looks yummy. I wonder if I can substitute chicken instead as I’m not a fan of lamb/mutton curry 😦
WJ: Yes, you can. With chicken, you dont have to cook too long as chicken cooks faster.
Sidetrack a bit….what goes into rasam? Always love it but no idea what’s in it….hehe
WJ: Eh sorry, missed out on this comment. The last time I made rasam was yearsss ago, dont remember exactly, but here are the bits that I remember: cumin, fennel, coriander seeds, shallots, garlic, tomato, curry leaves and what gives rasam its lovely sourish taste is tamarind!
WEi why so long never update ur blog??