Eating Italy!

Passport & Plate - Oven-Baked Lamb and Vegetable Curry

India | Friday, March 14, 2014 | 5 photos

Ingredients
Ingredients:
400g shoulder lamb, cut into 2cm cubes
4 tablespoons ghee
1 large brown onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tomato, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 green apple, diced
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
200ml coconut milk

For the curry paste:
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon chili powder
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger

 

How to prepare this recipe
This is a simple recipe, which should take 30 minutes to prepare and 1 hour to cook.
It makes a nice, mild curry; you may half the chili powder for less spicy or double the chili powder to make it hotter.
You may serve the curry with basmati rice or naan.
Serves 2-4 people.

Method:
1) Combine coriander, cumin, turmeric, chilli powder and grated ginger in a blender and blend for around 2 minutes till you get a smooth paste. You may add one tablespoon of water if you find it difficult to blend.

2) Take half of this paste and in a bowl, add the lamb cubes and mix well with your hands till it is well coated with the spices. Cover and let it marinate for 30 minutes. If you have time, leaving it overnight would better allow the spices to marinate.

3) Preheat your oven to 170ºC/325ºF/gas 3.

4) Dice and chop your vegetables as described in the ingredients list.

5) Melt ghee in a frying pan. On medium heat, sauté the onions and garlic for 2 minutes first, then add in the carrots, green apple and tomatoes and sauté for another 2 minutes.

6) Add in the remaining half of curry paste and stir the vegetables around in the paste for about 1 minute.

7) Transfer everything to a large casserole dish or metal pot. Add in the lamb. Pour in the coconut milk and fresh lemon juice. You may add a few dried chilies for extra spiciness and colour. All the contents should be submerged in the coconut milk.

8) Cover the casserole dish/ pot and let it sit in the oven for one hour.

9) After one hour, take out the dish and check if the meat is tender. Enjoy your lamb and vegetable curry with basmati rice or naan!

 

The story behind this recipe
I was staying in a centuries-old house in Dresden, Germany, through Couchsurfing.com, during my yearlong travel around the world. Shortly after, a Turkish guy came to stay too. In the evening, my host offered to prepare this curry he had learnt to cook while in India. The Turkish guy and I said we wanted to learn how to cook it. This is how I came to learn of this recipe.

I wonder if you can picture it. There we were, a German guy, a Turkish guy and a Singaporean girl, in Dresden, eating a curry which recipe came from India, with Turkish pide and drinking Rakia from the Balkans. Can anything get more global and multi-cultural than this?

This curry is special because it represents the memory of that night’s global culinary adventure. It embodies so much meaning of what food means and what food can do. That night, strangers from different parts of the world, with different cultures, habits, traditions and attitudes towards food, now sit and eat together as friends and partake in various foods from different parts of the world. As we eat, we are together being transported to India by the smell of the curry’s spice, we experienced the Turkish baker and oven through the pide and we tasted the sweetness of the Balkan mountain air through the Rakia. Through one table, we experienced the world. Nothing else but food is able to do this.

All our differences towards food did not matter; the different foods were able to bind us together simply through our openness to receive them. This is why food is so amazing and wonderful. Food is able to traverse geography and cultures. Food can bring the world to you on a plate. And food can also bring you to the world. This is the beauty of food.

There is also a personal reason why this dish is special to me. Unfortunately, some time later, there was a misunderstanding with my German friend who taught me this recipe and we stopped talking to each other. Nevertheless, the recipe lives on and gets passed on, proving that food is eternal