Masala Lamb Chops or Chaanp as They Say it Back Home

This is version 1.1 of my recipe and I am sure it is the final cut. It was so good, I smacked my plate clean and bit and licked the rib bones, till my husband had to take them away from me. Albeit with some force. I know. I know, there is something very unattractive about calling your own recipe “perfect”. But there is no turning back from here.

And you will know why!

So the next time you are at your butcher shop or at the supermarket, make sure you get a rack of kid lamb or baby goat and ask your butcher to make you chops, equal slices of the ribs. Do not remove the fat.

The cooking time is shockingly short for this recipe if you have marinated your chops/chaanp for about 24 hours. The Masala Chaanp will make a great appetizer with a big pitcher of beer during the upcoming IPL season. Or you can remain sober and serve it for dinner with some sides and salads to spike up a boring evening.

Ingredients for Masala Lamb Chops/ Chaanp

500 grams lamb/ goat chops
3 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 tablespoon finely grated ginger
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon fresh green chili paste
1 tablespoon minced fresh coriander (leaves and stem)
Juice of one lemon
Half tablespoons coriander powder
Half teaspoon cumin seeds, crushed
Quarter teaspoon clove powder
1 + 1 tablespoon canola or vegetable oil
Salt

Mix everything, except the oil, in a large bowl. If your hands are sensitive to green chilies, make your husband do all the mixing!

Make sure the marinade covers the chops well. Refrigerate for 24 hours. Make sure you keep the bowl out on your kitchen counter at least an hour before you cook the chops. Drizzle one tablespoon of oil and coat the meat well.

Heat your grill pan till its smoking hot. Brush some oil on the pan. Give it a couple of minutes to heat up.

 
Line the chops on the grill pan and let them sizzle and seduce your senses. Little by little drizzle drops of oil on the chops.
After about 5-6 minutes, turn the chops. By now you would have got nice char marks on the meat. Baste the chops with the leftover marinade and few more drops of oil. Keep the flame on high all this time.  
Give the chops 7-8 minutes on medium heat on each side to cook them through. Poke a little fork into one of the chops to see if the juices run clear.

Squirt some lemon juice on the lamb chops and serve hot. Savor the taste of freshness on a bone. It doesn’t get better than this.

Well, isn't that a welcome platter?

Mutton Curry

Okay, let me tell you one thing – curry is never made in hurry. So whoever sells you curry in a hurry, is either being facetious or just hasn’t got their curry basics right.

This Mutton Curry for all the time it takes to make is probably one of the most tasteful things you can make with meat. I have used goat meat in this recipe (which is how its made in India). But if don’t find goat meat, you can make it with lamb too.

Ingredients for Mutton Curry are:

1 kg goat meat, bone in, cut into two inch pieces
2 medium size red onions finely slivered
1 pod of garlic
2 inch piece of root ginger
Handful of green chilies
Handful of chopped coriander leaves
2 heaped tablespoons of MDH Kashmiri Lal Mirch (or paprika)
1 heaped tablespoons coriander powder
1 tablespoon turmeric powder
Half tablespoon cumin powder
1 small cinnamon stick
2 black cardamoms
2-3 green cardamoms
4-5 cloves
2 bay leaves
2 + 4 tablespoons mustard oil (or canola oil)
Salt

Wash and drain all the moisture from the meat. Grind to a smooth paste the garlic cloves, ginger and green chilies. Add minimum water to this mixture.

In a glass bowl, mix the meat, ginger-garlic-chili paste, turmeric, Kashmiri lal mirch powder, coriander powder, cumin powder and two tablespoons mustard oil. Give everything a good mix and marinade for 5-6 hours. Since I was making this curry for lunch, I did the marinade overnight in the fridge.

Heat mustard oil, add the bay leaves, cinnamon, cloves and cardamoms. Sauté for a minute and add the slivered red onions. If you want your onions to caramelize quickly, add a pinch of sugar in the hot oil and then add the onions.

Keep stirring the onions on low-medium heat till they turn golden brown in color. Add the marinated meat and start stirring to mix it thoroughly with the onions. Keep stirring so that the meat at the top changes position and goes to the bottom of your pan. Get a light brown color on the meat. You can even cover and cook the meat right from the start.

After browning the meat, add salt to taste. Adding salt tenderizes the meat and it starts cooking in its own moisture. Keep the pan covered but stir from time to time.

You will see the meat and the spices changing color from a raw, bland look to a rich, dark brown color. It takes about 40-45 minutes for the meat to cook in it own moisture. But since we want some “curry” in our meat, we will add little by little water and cook the meat covered.

Check the meat if it has been completely cooked. Garnish with chopped coriander and remove from heat.

Mutton Curry is best served with plain white rice, rotis or even pulao (something which I personally love!).

Kosha Chaanp

Any true-blue Bengali will get all passionate upon hearing two words Kosha and Mangsho, and if they are in the same sentence following one another, then you have a slave for life Bengali.

Bengalis like the rest of the world are going so fast these days, they forget to slow down. Kosha Mangsho is like bhalobasha (love), you can’t just hurry either! “Kosha” is the process of slow cooking, frying to be precise. When it comes to kosha, you can actually taste time. Its about slow cooking meat that will just melt in the mouth. If this form of cooking appeals to you, keep reading the rest of this post.

Many Bengalis will agree with me when I say using the “kosha” technique is a living, breathing tradition in Bengali homes. It is traditionally cooked in a handi over slow fire for about an hour. They say it takes a lifetime to master a Kosha Mangsho. I am lucky to have come close to discovering the secret of a good Kosha Mangsho recipe by my mid-life. I took the same recipe and gave it a new attitude with Chaanp (Hindi/Bengali for rack of lamb or ribs).

Ingredients for Kosha Chaanp are:

500 grams rack of lamb or goat (Frenched)
1 medium size red onion chopped fine
Half cup plain yogurt
1 tablespoon ginger paste
1 tablespoon garlic paste
2 teaspoons green chili paste
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon red chili powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
Half teaspoon garam masala powder
2-3 tablespoons mustard oil
Couple of bay leaves
Pinch of sugar
Salt

And the last ingredient is TIME!

Start by marinating the ribs with yogurt, ginger-garlic-green chili paste and the garam masala powder. I let it sit in the fridge overnight.
One mistake I made was that I did not ask my butcher to cut the ribs for me. I did it myself with some help from the kitchen scissor. And I did it after marinating so that the meat softened a bit. 
Start by heating mustard oil, when it smokes a little add the pinch of sugar and then the onions. The heated oil will caramelize the sugar and the onions will naturally get the rich color we want for our Kosha Chaanp. Add the bay leaf to punch up some flavor to the onions.

Fry the onions till they are almost brown. Add ribs without the marinade. Save it for later!
Brown the meat on all sides and add the dry spice powders- turmeric, red chili, and coriander. Mix well and keep frying. Scrape any spices and marinade that stick to your pan/pressure cooker.
Add salt to taste. The salt starts to do its job and will get the liquid out of the meat and marinade.
Keep cooking the meat. Just when you have enough color to the meat, add the marinade mixed with a little water. At this time, lower the heat to the lowest mark as the yogurt in the marinade could curdle on high heat. Cover and cook till the meat is done.
The last step is to crank up the heat and dry up all the extra liquid and moisture. Babysit the Kosha Chaanp as we don’t want any burned meat on our plates.

All the spices will cling to the meat and give it a nice thick texture. Serve hot with rotis or parathas.
P.S. You can follow the same recipe and cook shoulder pieces of lamb or goat and call it Kosha Mangsho! Voilà.

Raan Sikander Raan

No, nobody called Sikander is being chased by a screaming Bengali. In fact, its is the name of the new lamb recipe I attempted today.

Sikandari Raan (Marinated Whole Leg of Spring Lamb) is one of the signature lamb dishes of the Bukhara Restaurant in ITC Maurya. Though their Dal Bukhara (Creamy Black Lentil) and Murgh Malai Kebab (Creamy Chicken Kebab) are undoubtedly the most popular from their spread. Ask Clinton. No, not Hillary. The other one.
Like most of Bukhara’s dishes, Sikandari Raan is inspired by the traditions of the Northwestern frontier. Its the sheer scope and scale of this cuisine (essentially a mix of Afghan, Indian, Iranian, Pakistani, Central Asian and Middle Eastern) that makes it so inventive in its flavors.

Sikandari Raan is the sort of thing your kitchen can become famous for. And I am still craving for some fame. Maybe this time…

I traveled downtown to my butcher to get a leg of Spring Lamb. Supermarkets don’t do it for me, especially when I am making something so traditional. The leg of lamb I bought was about a kilo in weight. My butcher, a very affectionate lady at the Kensington Market suggested I take the front leg slash shoulder which has better marbling than the hind legs. She also cracked the bone at couple of places just so my marinade worked better. I knew she was right and let her.
At home, I scored the meat deep enough to reach the center bone from both sides. My butcher had already trimmed the extra fat.

So here I am now, introducing to you the ingredients and process of making Sikandari Raan!

1 leg of Spring Lamb (about one kilogram)
One and a half teaspoon ginger paste
One and a half teaspoon garlic paste
Juice of one lemon
Half cup white rum
Half cup vinegar
Half teaspoon mace (javitri) powder
One teaspoon black pepper powder
Half teaspoon cardamom powder
Two teaspoons red chili powder
Vegetable oil for basting
Chaat Masala
Salt

Make a dry rub with red chili powder, mace powder, black pepper powder and salt. Rub it all over the lamb making sure it reaches the insides through the scoring you have already done. Now mix the juice of one lemon and the ginger-garlic paste. With the back of a spoon or a butter knife, spread this mixture all over the lamb. Its important you do the dry rub first and then the wet marinade so that the flavors infuse better. I let the lamb marinate in my fridge overnight.
I don’t like drinking rum, but I’d definitely like to eat it. That’s one of the two more ingredients I added next to my marinating leg. Half cup of white rum and half cup of vinegar to drench the lamb. I let the lamb stand outside for four-five hours before it went in the oven.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cook the lamb for an hour turning at least two to three times. The Holy Grail for any barbequing or grilling is moisture. The rum and vinegar are the key ingredients which keep the meat from turning dry. Once you see that the liquids have cooked in the baking dish, baste the lamb with oil, and roast again for 30 minutes or till the meat is done.
You can sprinkle some chaat masala and serve the Sikandari Raan with onion rings and lemon wedges.
I love the way the recipe does not confuse or overpower the meat with too many spices. Its kept at a minimum on the ingredients quotient and maximum when it comes to taste!

I served the Sikandari Raan with some jalapeño peppers stuffed with feta cheese, a couple of butter-broiled corn on the cobs, and little heads of broccoli and carrot sticks with some spinach and chipotle dip.
As for my Sikander (its actually the Hindi name for Alexander the Great), he was already eyeing the leftovers for lunch tomorrow, while I treated myself with some chocolate-filled cannolis. And we both ate happily ever after…