Goat Curry

Goat is a wonderful meat. Even people who don't like lamb usually like goat. I hope we get more goat-eaters in this country soon: goats are inexpensive, ecologically happy animals to raise. They thrive eating plants that other animals can't stand- much less want to eat, such as brambles, briars and ivy. As smaller animals, they obviously don't require the resources larger animals like cows need. Does also produce milk which can be drunk as is, or from which excellent cheese can be made. Goats are awesome!
And tasty... which comes to the point of my post: Goat Curry
yummy stuff.
Goat is often found at the grocers in stew-meat format- usually with the bone. Perfect for this recipe.

Sorry if the photos are a little fuzzy, I took them with my phone. hehe

Firstly, wash the meat, get all the bone-dust off of it, if any.

Then salt and pepper the meat.

Fry the meat really well in a little oil.

Remove from the pan.

Meanwhile, make a paste of garlic, chiles (I used fresh green chiles and sweet red peppers) and fresh ginger. This looks picturesque, but I ended up switching to a stick blender! hehe

Fry some chopped onion in the pan after you have removed the meat. Add some black mustard seeds, cumin seeds, the seeds of a few cardomom pods and fry for a minute until you can smell them, then add a little bit of ground turmeric, and ground allspice. Fry another 30 seconds or so and then add your chile, ginger, and garlic paste.

Have some fresh tomatoes chopped, or use some canned chopped tomatoes. Here I'm using a mixture of sweet cherry tomatoes and a regular tomato and the cherry tomatoes add a hint of sweetness that this curry likes. You might want to add a pinch of sugar to the pot if your tomatoes are not very sweet.

Add the tomatoes.

Add the meat back to the pot. Add a cinnamon stick and water for simmering. Goat cut like this can take a LONG time to get tender. I'm talking as much as 4 hours simmering on low for it to achieve that fall-off-the-bone tender that we are looking for. Trust me, it's worth it. Put the lid on the pot, and have the flame on low. Your house will smell awesome.

Ok! This is our delicious goat curry after our long simmer. I've added a bit of water here and there along the way, and given things a stir from time to time, but other than that, it has done it's thing. Taste to see if it needs a bit of salt and there you have it!

Some tasty ways to serve this are with rice, flat-breads, crusty loaf breads, or with cubed potatoes added into the curry itself. Garnish with your favorite greenery- be it parsley or cilantro or even some minced lettuce for crunch.

Enjoy!

Lovely Lentil Curry and Brown Sweet Rice

I've fallen in love with brown sweet rice!! The texture is unique, the rice literally "pops" in your mouth with the similar feel of a good barley. I don't really feel the need to extol the vast and varied virtues of eating brown rice, it's been done before..perhaps not with such seriously superb alliteration though, hehe.

However, I do want to tote the virtues of brown sweet rice because it's sooooooo darn tasty! I've tried a few methods for cooking this type of rice, but I think the best method is the boil/steam method. What you do is this:

Bring a generous amount of water to boil, add washed rice and boil until when you taste it, the texture is nearly done. This will vary depending on the age of the rice, hardness of your water, etc, so you really do have to taste it! Then you'll know for next time. Anyway, next... Strain it, put it back inyo the pot on the warm burner, put a lid on it and let it steam in it's own heat for about 10 minutes. You won't be unhappy with the results.

Anyway, I've been promising a friend of mine that I would post something nice and lentilly for him to try. Lentils are like legume fast-food. They're super fast and easy and nutritious to boot. They get a bad rap in some circles for whatever reason. I once read this cookbook on Middle Eastern food and the author had put in a little song translated from Arabic about lentils. It went something like:

"By the life of my father, by the life of my father I will not marry the poor man who will tell me to pound the lentils in the morning. By the life of my father, by the life of my father, I will marry the rich man who will tell me to pound the pastry with fat."

So I remember thinking..so lady, you've still got some guy telling you to pound on something and now you're pudgy to boot.

So now you know that lentils are wrapped up with that great little ditty in my mind which probably has it's own psychological definition or something. See what I get for reading too many cookbooks?

Back to the cooking bit.

Lovely Lentil Curry

Wash 1.5 cups of lentils, and simmer until soft. This is a fairly generous portion of lentils, about 6 to 8 people's worth.

2 T virgin coconut oil (of course you can use something else, but this has nice flavor)
2 t. whole cumin seeds
1/2 t. ground coriander
1 t. ground turmeric
2 t. black mustard seeds
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
salt and pepper, red chile flakes to taste
1/2-1 cup coconut milk - Use fresh or powdered and use it to adjust the consistency.
dessicated coconut -optional, but tasty
cilantro, chopped

Fry the cumin and mustard seeds in the coconut oil until the mustard seeds begin to sputter and the cumin release it's fragrance, then add the powdered spices. Add the onion and fry until golden, then add the garlic. Stir for a minute and add the cooked lentils, then coconut milk, dessicated coconut if you're using it, salt and pepper and red chile flakes to taste. Cook for a few minutes to desired consistency, perhaps a little soupier if you're serving with brown rice, perhaps a little drier if it's being served solo, add cilantro to taste and serve.

Enjoy!

Sweet Potato Curry

Sweet Potatoes and Coconut...so good together!

I made a curry last night that I want to share. It has all the principles of a family keeper. It was fast,fast, fast, easy and fast. It's so tasty, and the kids loved it. As in I actually got a "Wow, Mom, this is delicious!" Did I mention I got compliments from the kids..as in they ate it all. I almost fell off my chair. On that virtue alone, I post it here. Maybe one of you may be so lucky and get empty bowls without whining!

I based the curry I made on a recipe I found online. Here is the link if you're interested in seeing that version. One of the main differences, I didn't puree the onions in a food processor. I also added chicken because I was making a main dish, not a side dish or vegetarian main. I think it would certainly be delicious without the meat. I also used candied ginger. You could use fresh ginger, but the candied was really superb. Candied ginger has this sweet heat, it really added depth of flavor. This recipe serves 5.

1 onion, chopped
a few pieces of candied ginger, chopped fine
1 T virgin coconut oil (substitute butter, ghee or olive oil)
1-2 t. garam masala + .5 t. whole cumin (I make my own garam masala, but you could use any nice blend of warm spices)
salt and pepper to taste
1 to 1.5 cups coconut milk. Unless you're using fresh, in which I say bully for you! I really recommend using the powdered coconut over the canned stuff. The flavor is so superior, you will forever pooh-pooh the can.
3 smallish sweet potatoes, peeled and chunked. Use more if you're making this vegetarian.
4-5 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, chunked (use breast if you prefer)
3 T fish sauce (nuoc mam, nam pla..etc) If you're veg., use soy sauce.
2 t. turbinado sugar, or to taste

Start the onions working in the coconut oil. You want a little more than translucent, but not really brown. Add the ginger, then the spices. Let this cook a minute or two to take the raw off the spices. Add the coconut milk and then the sweet potatoes, chicken, fish sauce and sugar. Put a lid on it and let simmer until the sweet potatoes are tender.

I served this over a mixture of brown rice and beans (from the garden! hehe). When you use chicken, the meat naturally creates some more broth, so if you prefer a drier curry, I would add mostly cooked brown rice and beans or lentils towards the end of cooking and let them soak up some of the broth. Or add raw lentils straight to the curry, they themselves will soak up moisture. Just check it periodically to make sure there's enough liquid to cook everything nicely.

The sweet potatoes were so good! They developed this silken texture, it was almost like silken tofu with sweet potato flavor. MMMM!

I have to boast and show a picture of some of my latest garden goodies. :)

Boast, boast, boast

Enjoy!

Really Good Vegetable Curry

So I had this post all ready to go and I added the photos like I normally do, put in the captions and it all went to hell in a handbasket. And because blogspot autosaves your work for you, which is usually a good thing, all my recipe goodness was lost. I have to tell you it made me so mad I haven't even thought about a redo for a week now.

However, I felt that I should move on with life, and so I'm going to attempt the remake of my last post, however I'm sure it won't be as witty or clever and will be but a poor shadow of it's former self, but such is life when the computer eats your homework.

This first picture is a show-off because I just can't believe that I'm growing anything that lives, much less is producing tasty things I can eat. It is amazing! I want a pair of overalls and a straw hat, pronto! Actually, really I do, it's like the perfect gardening getup. Anyway, so here one of my zucchini plants doing it's thing. I love it!

Ok, so the original purpose of this post was to talk about this really awesome vegetable curry that I found from Gordon Ramsay, who I really like actually. Not the hyper-obnoxious American TV persona, but the Gordon Ramsay who you find from British sources and is a damn fine chef. So one of the mystiques of looking at him from British sources, is translating the recipes. Once we get past the obvious, like courgette=zucchini, the mystery of this recipe was an ingredient called madras curry paste, which is something I'd actually never heard of. I love when that happens! So after a little research I found out that it is a dry spice masala, mixed with a little fresh ginger, garlic and vinegar to form a paste. It's actually sold pre-fab in England, and I'm sure you could order it, but you can certainly whip up your own and stick the extra in a jar in the fridge, which is what I did.

Madras Curry Paste

Madras Curry Paste

2.5 T coriander seed
1 T cumin seed
1 t black mustard seed
1 t black peppercorns
1 t red chile flakes
1 t ground turmeric
3 garlic
1 T ginger, grated
3-4 T vinegar
Toast the coriander, cumin, mustard and peppercorns in a dry skillet until they start to release their fragrance. Be careful as they can scorch easily. Next grind the toasted spices, or grind in a mortar. If using a mortar, pound in the garlic. Add the chile flakes, turmeric, grated ginger and moisten with the vinegar until a nice paste consistency. That's all there is to it!

Now for the vegetable curry. I'll post the original, and then I'll tell you what I did. Not because I wanted to mess with it, but because I use what I have on hand, and a good method will embrace that, which it does, so experiment!


Easy Vegetable Curry

2 T oil (I used butter)
1 banana shallot, chpd (I used onion)
1 garlic, chpd (more!)
1 sm celeraic, peeled and chpd (Didn't have this :( Hard to get where I am, next year I'll grow my own!)
sea salt and bl. pepper
3 T madras curry paste
few cardamom pods
1 gr. pepper, deseeded and chpd (I used Hungarian Wax chiles from the garden)
1/2 cauliflower, cut into florets (I had some frozen cauliflower)
400g can chpd tomatoes
1/2 head broccoli, cut into florets (Ihad some nice mixed veggies, edamame, corn and red peppers and some fresh swiss chard that I used instead)
1 large courgette, chopped (Zucchini fresh from the garden)
250ml container Greek-style yogurt (I used Kefir)
chopped fresh cilantro if you want

The method is such, heat the fat and start cooking the aromatics, onions, garlic and chiles, then when they're soft, add the curry paste and cardamom. Next add the celeraic and the cauliflower since they would take the longest to cook, or whatever you're using that would take the longest. Salt and pepper- a little water if the pan is getting too hot. Next add the can of tomatoes, and the other veggies. If you're using greek-style yogurt which is very thick, add a can of water to start it to stew. Since I was using kefir, which is much thinner, I added just a little water, put a lid on the pot to capture the steam, and let it stew in it's own juice since the kefir was going to thin it out considerably. When the veggies are tender to your desired degree, on low heat, stir in the dairy and cilantro.

That's all there is too it. Very tasty!

I've noticed that Gordon Ramsay has a little how-to video of this curry circulating around, so if you want to see it, it's available. The only annoying part is that the camera-man focused mainly on his face and upper torso, but not so far out that you could see what his hands were doing- or the pot for that matter....hello, cameraman, we want to see the food! But other than that, you can get a fairly good idea of the method.

Enjoy!