A meaty weekend

A recipe post from me, after a long, long time. 

With good reason that too!

The past weekend the hubby was travelling out of the country.

So I decided to mourn his absence  make the most of his absence by cooking things he doesn't normally eat or cribs about eating.

Normally that would mean fish.

Even after having known the man for 15 years, I have still not succeeded in making him the least bit enthusiastic about fish.

Or prawns. Or crabs. Or squids. 

Or anything that lives in/ comes out of the water.

However, the man is smart enough to never state upfront that he hates fish; a very smart move considering it might be very unwise and not to mention dangerous, saying that to a fish obsessed Bengali, esp when the fish obsessed Bengali happens to be your wife.

But every time there is fish on the plate, I cannot help but feel that I am being sent a (not so) subtle hint or two; like an "Oh"of  utter shock, followed by a sigh of resignation and then a long silence during which the fish is poked suspiciously as if one is expecting the fish come alive and walk off the plate any minute; or a look of sheer martyrdom, the kinds that gave Meena Kumari the title of the Tragedy Queen of Bollywood; and so ultimately I end up feeling a wee bit guilty and a wee bit awful about enjoying my fish (a wee bit because no Bengali can feel very guilty or awful while eating fish) and end up resolving to cook him some spicy chilly chicken instead.

So my first thought was of treating myself to a weekend of uninterrupted fish eating revelry.

Then it hit me that there was something I love more than fish and had incidentally not eaten for a very long time; another quintessential Bengali favourite - MUTTON. Tender goat meat to be specific. Now like every true Bengali, my vision of bliss involves stuffing myself with rice and a curry made with tender goat meat and potatoes and then settling down for a nice, long afternoon siesta. 

And I had not experienced this feeling of bliss for a long, long time (read a month and a half)! 

Through a cruel joke of Fate.

Now when I married Vj, he was a regular beer loving, mutton loving, sausage and bacon loving man whose idea of a perfect weekend was lounging in front of the TV chomping down chilli chicken with bottles of beer. Apart from his dislike of rice and fish, he infact came very close to passing himself off as a food loving Bengali who derived great joy from dreaming about his next meal. 

And then something went wrong.. 

Terribly wrong.

Tragedy struck our food centred world.
In the form of marathon running. 

Instead of spending his time napping in front of the TV, the husband started waking up at the unearthly hour of 3 am and running marathons. Or preparing to run marathons. Or reading about marathons during his spare time. Or researching the Internet about the date, schedule and time of the next marathon in town; sometimes in nearby towns or countries.

And instead of gobbling down meat in every form, suddenly he started glaring at it with deep suspicion and evaluating the calories in it!

Suddenly we went from conversations such as, "Hey, let's go to XYZ restaurant that serves the most amazing sannas and pork sorpotel/ steak and mash/ Sikandari raan" to "Hey, did you know that one tiny sausage has 400 calories and is bad for you because yadda yadda yadda...?" 

Suddenly from perfect blissful weekends of gorging on mutton curry with rice, we had reached a horrifying place where red meat stood for the fruit of the poisonous tree of calories and cholesterol!

And suddenly, the person who was giving competition to the tragedy queen at the table was ME!

After all, bereft of mutton, bereft of bacon, bereft of sausages, bereft of crabs and prawns, and bereft of wine, what IS there to look forward to in a weekend?

So this weekend, with Vj out of the country, I could think of no better time to give in to a weekend of red meat induced revelry! Friday morning, almost immediately after he left with his bags, I rushed off to Tekka market (local wet market in Singapore where Indian groceries are available) and got myself a really nice, tender leg of mutton.

And to do full justice to it, I decided to cook two distinctly different dishes. After a few hours of surfing the Internet and checking recipes on some food forums I am a member of; I decided to attempt two recipes both dramatically different from each other.

a. Mutton Beliram - a spicy, heavy, somewhat opulent and lavish preparation, named after the legendary cook from Punjab

b. Railway Mutton Curry - a more light, comforting recipe from the days of the British Raj.

However I must add/ warn that, while cooking both, I didn't follow the recipe of either exactly and did my own thing in each case. 

Sharing both the recipes here in this post. 

From Beliram to Hai Raam!

First stop was Gosht Beliram; a dish supposedly created by Beliram, the legendary royal cook of Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Patiala. I read about this dish first on a food forum and my curiosity was aroused. I spent some time scouring the Internet and found quite a few versions, including chef Vikram Arora's version which looked a little more effort intensive than I had bargained for. I also found a few originating from Jiggs Kalra's Prashad - cooking with Indian Masters and I decided to try that because it looked simple and do-able (and not to mention was one of the rare recipes of Jiggs Kalra which didn't look complicated)

Here is the recipe I followed; well, almost (from indiayum.com)

FOR THE MARINADE

1 kg mutton

2 cups yogurt ( beat till smooth)

2 big onions - cut into thin slices

2 tbsp finely grated ginger

2 tbsp chopped garlic

6 -8 green cardamom

6-8 cloves

2 sticks cinnamon

salt to taste

2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder

OTHER INGREDIENTS

½ cup ghee 

2 tbsp whole coriander seeds crushed lightly

WHAT TO DO

First, mix all the ingredients of the marinade together. Leave the meat in the marinade for a few hours. I left it overnight inside the fridge.

Heat ghee in a deep pan.

When it is hot, add the coriander seeds and wait for them to crackle.

Then add the marinated meat and let it cook on sim till done.

Now for the Hai Raam part. 

I dislike the taste and smell of whole/ broken coriander seeds in my food; and so, at the last minute I chickened out and added cumin (jeera) seeds instead as I decided that in the quest of a weekend of meaty indulgence, taste was far more important to me than authenticity. They made the dish lose it's authenticity and it's unique taste but nevertheless gave it a very nice, rustic flavour.

I also reduced the amount of ghee from half a cup to one tablespoon as I was using a thick and creamy yogurt. Inspite of the drastically reduced ghee, the meat was quite heavy and I ended up with a plain salad for dinner to make up for the heavy lunch.

It's the Railway; my way. . . .

The Mutton Beliram was so heavy inspite of trying to make a low cal version of it, that the next day my body cried out for something lighter, something more comforting. And so I decided to do a thin mutton curry on the lines of the Railway Mutton Curry. 

Again, while I had decided to do the Railway mutton curry; I couldn't stick to one recipe and just had mix and match recipes I found on the Internet and come up with my own version. . . . (I guess one of the reasons I avoid recipe posts is because I can never do something without adding my own two bit to it and thus end up losing the authenticity that people crave for in recipes. . . .

Anyway, the versions I followed here were not one but three - Sanjeev Kapoor's version; this one and a post I had seen on a food forum on Facebook (which unfortunately I am not able to link to, as I am unable to locate it using the Search option on the page). 

Well, here it is - my miss-mash of a railway curry. . . .

INGREDIENTS FOR THE MARINADE
Mutton 750gms
Ginger grated 1 tablespoon
Garlic grated 1 tablespoon
2 tablespoon dahi/ yogurt (not there in any of the recipes but I added it to keep the meat moist)
Salt
Turmeric powder half teaspoon

I marinated the mutton overnight with all of the above and a tablespoon of grated papaya.

OTHER INGREDIENTS

2 medium sized onions chopped into thin wedges
Tomato** 1 large grated
Kashmiri chilli powder 2 teaspoons (I am always generous about my Kashmiri chilli powder as I love the fiery red colour it gives curries without adding to the spice levels)
Cumin powder 1 teaspoon
Turmeric powder 1/2 teaspoon
Cinnamon
Cardamom
Cumin seeds one teaspoon
Dry red chillies 3-4
Potatoes - 3-4, each cut into 4 pieces
Garlic - 20 cloves peeled. §§

Coriander leaves **

§§The thing I loved about the FB recipe was the twist of adding a whole garlic to the meat while cooking it. I love garlic in my food and was all for adding the garlic. But I knew my sons would throw a fit if they saw a whole garlic staring at them from the gravy so I added garlic pods about halfway into the curry and let it cook.

**Now two of the versions have curry leaves and tamarind and vinegar. But my 3yr olds were going to eat it and they are not used to the taste of tamarind. Hence to avoid any sourness, I used tomato and stayed closer to the Sanjeev Kapoor version.

HOW TO:

Put one tablespoon ghee in a deep pan

When hot, add one teaspoon jeera seeds, cinnamon and cardamom and dry red chillies and let them crackle.

Then add onion and fry till golden brown.

After that add the cumin powder, salt, turmeric powder, chilli powder and fry well.

Then add the tomatoes and fry a bit more.

Then add the mutton and the potatoes and fry well for about 5-7 minutes and then cover and cook on low flame.

When water starts drying, keep adding hot water and cooking it on low flame.

When mutton is half done, add the garlic pods and cook till done.

Garnish with coriander leaves and eat with hot rice for a perfect finish to a perfect meaty weekend!