Rangooni Rice and Mutton Stew

I have a lot to say, but I am exhausted from last week’s drama. So I will just write a recipe today.

This stew is as rustic as it can get. But rustic in a classy way, something that you’d want to eat over and over again.

My Mother-in-law learnt this stew from her friend who was brought up in erstwhile Burma. When I married into the Basu family, I also got married to some of their recipes. This is one of the regulars in my parents-in-laws’ home. Sadly, we don’t know the name of this dish, if you do, do let us know. Till that time lets call it Rangooni Rice and Mutton Stew.

For this recipe, you need very few things. Everything else is unnecessary.

Ingredients for Rangooni Rice and Mutton Stew are:

1 kg goat meat, bone and fat in cut into 2 inch pieces (I use the shoulder portion of a baby goat)
100 grams fresh ginger, cut into large chunks
1 cup rice, cleaned, washed and sieved (you can use short-grain rice, I used Basmati)
10 fat cloves of garlic, cut into slices
10 whole dry red chillies
Lime/lemon cut into wedges
3-4 tablespoons canola/vegetable/olive oil
Salt

Start by getting your mutton ready, wash and clean. Drain the excess water.

In a large pan, add the mutton, the chunks of fresh ginger and enough water to cover the mutton and ginger. Cook covered till the meat is tender and falling off the bones. Don’t overcook, like I did! (It happened over changing of diapers and giving LMN a bath.)

You may want to cook the meat the previous night if you are serving this stew for lunch the next day. Wait for the meat/ liquid to cool down completely. You will notice a layer of fat collected on the meat. Remove that with a ladle, discard or preserve as you may wish.

Start by heating up the cooked mutton and add the rice before the liquid starts to boil. Keep stirring and add more water if you want. Season with salt.

Once the rice is cooked and you have achieved the consistency you want for your stew, turn the heat off.

In the meantime, shallow fry your sliced garlic and whole dry red chillies till they are crisp.

This should be done on low flame lest they burn, which they do pretty quickly. So its best to babysit them till they are ready to come out of the pan. You may keep the oil in too with the garlic and red chilly garnish.

Ladle the rice and mutton stew into open-face bowls and add spoonfuls of the crispy garlic and red chillies onto it. Squirt some lemon juice and serve. (The pieces of ginger can be discarded before you serve the stew into individual bowls; they were added for flavour. Unless you are absolutely mental about ginger, and would want to bite into them.)

Its important that there remains complete silence in the room when you are eating this rice and mutton stew. That’s the only way you will hear the smacks of appreciation.

Yes, I love a little tareef when it comes to cooking with my heart. That’s how shallow I am. I also don’t take kindly to people who are thieves. “Shallow” and “unkind” are the two words that best describe me.