Niramish Mangsho, “Vegetarian” Mutton Curry, Fit for the Gods

Year after year, we would wait for this mutton curry on every Navami (ninth day of Durga Puja).

Every Navami, our neighbours in Patna would offer a sacrificial goat in their village to Goddess Durga. After that the goat meat would be brought to the city and “Uncle” would cook it himself on a clay oven or chulha.

What was a custom in our neighbour’s family, become a ritual of sorts in ours! To wait for this mutton curry sans onion and garlic to arrive at the stroke of eight every Navami night. Onion and garlic are essentially non-vegetarian ingredients according to Hindu culinary culture. Hence, what must be offered to the Gods and Goddesses must not have these ingredients. Thus started the use of other ingredients, which were “vegetarian” to cook the sacrificial goat!

That night of Navami, Mum would only have rotis made and some salad on the side. The sight of Kanchha, the neighbour’s help with a Borosil bowl of Niramish Mangsho sent all four of us in a tizzy of mutton ecstasy. We would do a quick Joy Ma Durga dance and run to greet Kanchha. We would thank him profusely and carry the warm bowl of mutton curry to the dinner table, where our Mum would be waiting with a hot case of countless rutis. After that there would be 30 minutes of revered silence as all of us got busy eating ruti after ruti with the Niramish Mangsho. And no, no one missed onions or garlic in this dish.

Ingredients for Niramish Mangsho are:

1 kg baby goat meat, bone in
3 tablespoons posto/khus khus/poppy seeds
3 teaspoons cumin seeds
2 inch piece of fresh ginger
2-3 green chillies, chopped
1 heaped teaspoon red chilli powder
1 heaped teaspoon turmeric
10 + 10 cashews
10+ 10 raisins
4 green cardamoms
2 black cardamoms
4-5 cloves
1 inch stick of cinnamon
Pinch of grated nutmeg
2 bay
2 tablespoons melted desi ghee/clarified butter
Sugar
Salt

Start by heating the ghee in a pressure pan/thick bottom pan.

Add the cardamoms, cloves, cinnamon, bay and nutmeg. Let them sauté for a few seconds, add a big pinch of sugar, let it dissolve in the ghee and then add the mutton.

Sear the mutton on high till all the pieces get browned. Then add about 10 each of cashews and raisins to the browned meat along with the chopped green chillies. Mix everything well, reduce the heat to low-medium, cover and cook for 5-10 minutes.

In the meantime, make a thick, smooth paste with the poppy seeds, cumin seeds, ginger, and the remaining cashews and raisins. Start by dry grinding the poppy and cumin seeds and then add the ginger, cashews and raisins. Add little water to grind. (You can throw in a couple of green chillies too to this paste, to add extra heat.)

While the mutton is cooking in its juices along with the whole garam masala and cashew, raisins and green chillies, add the red chilli and turmeric to it now. Keep the flame on low-medium and continue stirring the meat so that the spices don’t burn at the bottom.

After about five minutes, add the wet spice paste and mix well. Cover and cook for 5-6 minutes on low heat. Posto paste has a tendency to stick to the bottom of the pan, make sure you scrape the pan and get all the paste coated well on the pieces of mutton.

Cover and slow cook the mutton for 15 minutes moving it from time to time. Add salt and sugar. Cover and cook again. A mutton dish like this requires patience and slow cooking. Don't hurry up the cooking process.

You will notice the posto mixture turn into a brown hue now. Continue on low-medium heat for another 10 minutes. When the mutton starts releasing ghee, you will notice it line around the sides of the pan. Add a cup of water and mix well.

Cover and cook the meat for another 20 minutes. At this point, you can even decide to pressure cook the meat. I gave it two whistles and removed from fire. Once the pressure releases, open the pan and dry up any extra gravy by cooking the meat on high.

This dish should have the gravy clinging onto the pieces of the meat. Do a taste test and adjust the salt and sugar accordingly.

Niramish Mangsho is best eaten with flully rotis and with your HANDS. O, are you listening?

Baba’s Baghdadi Mutton

Red onion is great. If you minus the lingering onion-breath and the tears it makes you shed when peeling and cutting. Growing up in Patna, every year the price of red onion would sky rocket during winters.

We are an onion-loving family! We love onions in everything. Raw, cooked, crisp-fried, or dunked in hearty stews. Onion inflation was a sore point in my Mum’s kitchen, like any middleclass housewife on budget cooking. Its another story though that that budget included gourmet meals pretty much every day.

One day in the middle of the onion price-rise, my Mum would announce – No onions from now in salads or jhalmuri. Its 80 rupees a kilo.

So?

In spite of her I-am-the-Tiger-Mom approach towards onions, we would still find slices of them in our salad or a good amount of it in her Mutton Do Pyaza. I still wonder why she even bothered with that onion embargo, with that feeble willpower when it came to serving onions to her family.

I don’t have my Mother’s Mutton Do Pyaza recipe today.
But what I do have is a simple, full of character goat meat dish. My Father-in-law’s actually. Its not one of those flashy recipes, where you can’t lay your hands on half the ingredients mentioned. It is basic, hearty and once you can crack it, you will be the most clever cook in town. And I am talking to kitchen virgins here who think cooking mutton is the most difficult thing.

To make good mutton, that fall-off-the-bones kind is the best thing I have learned in (slow) cooking. So here it is, Baba’s Baghdadi Mutton. Any relation with Iraq and this dish is highly doubtful. Just enjoy the name and the recipe.

Ingredients for  Baba’s Baghdadi Mutton are:

500 grams goat meat, bone in, cut into two inch pieces (no lean meat please, get meat with good marbling. I usually get the shoulder portion of a baby goat)
1 very large red onion, slivered thinly
300 grams plain yogurt
1 teaspoon ginger paste
1 teaspoon garlic paste
1 heaped tablespoon freshly cracked black pepper
7-8 whole dry red chillies (I usually add about 20 since my husband and I have a high heat quotient, so adjust the heat accordingly, play safe if kids are eating)
2 tablespoons olive or vegetable or canola oil
Salt

For starters, get a large bowl, and marinate together the mutton, sliced red onions, yogurt, ginger-garlic paste, black pepper and the dry red chillies. Keep refrigerated overnight or on the counter for at least 5-6 hours.

Warm (not heat) oil in a thick pan, use the pressure (cooker) pan if you want to. Add the marinated mutton and coat well with the oil. Cover and cook, mixing and moving the mutton and spices for the next 40-50 minutes on low-medium heat.

You will see the mutton release its natural fat and juices as it comes close to being completely cooked. Add salt and a little water if needed. Move it around well. Do a taste test and remove from heat.

Serve the Baghdadi Mutton with a big garden salad (don’t forget the onions!) and phulkas/chapatis/ruti.

This is probably the quickest and easiest mutton dishes I have made. But no less tasty for that. Very few ingredients, simple flavours and takes you to a different direction of cooking mutton – with so little oil! Go try.