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.

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.