A Celebratory Dinner: Lamb Korma and Crusty Persian Rice

Today, forty-two years ago, I asked a girl out on a date.  The rest is history.  So, we had this small anniversary coming up and I was thinking of something out of the ordinary.  Especially in the light of the COVID-19 lockdowns and its side effects.

Now, forty-two years is not as special a date as a twenty-five or fifty, but there you go.  It came to me that expressions of love are not limited to physical efforts or presents.  It also comes in giving something of yourself in appreciation.  And what better way than cooking a special dish for your loved one.  Then both of you can share the joy.  In the end, the effort is not in the physical work involved, it is more in applying the mind to come up with a proper recipe, something out of the ordinary.  Kahneman wrote at length about his.

My choice fell on a korma, with a special rice dish.  Lamb korma with a nutty sauce and a flavourful and crusty Persian rice.  Tahdeeq.  These are dishes that I have not come across often in an eight-year foodie adventure.  Time for shaking the tree, I thought.

The korma is made with lamb in this case.  Make sure the meat is at room temperature and quite dry before you start.  Get meat with some bones in, the bones add extra flavour to the dish.  Roast the nuts, it adds a proper flavour to the dish.  I used cashews for this dish.  Almonds also work.  Fry the meat in a dry pan in small batches, else it boils.  You need the caramelisation in the pot, this becomes the stock.  

Remember some salt while you are frying the meat.  You also need to get the sauce up to standard before simmering the meat in the flavoured sauce.  Some of the nuts may be held back to use as a garnish, the rest is blended with the onions to make a thick sauce.  The garlic/chili/ginger mix needs to be 1 chili, ½ ginger, ¼ garlic by volume.  Get a recipe here.  I would not venture into the variations of dry masala powder.  Just use your favourite.  This dish needs to be flavourful, but not strong and spicy.  Remember, you are working with very light and subtle spices.

The process for the rice is quite simple, with a cheat to make it easy.  The rice needs a crust, which tends to stick to the pan.  I get around this little problem by lining the pot with waxed paper.  No sticking, and it is easy to lift the rice out of the pot and invert it on a plate.  The rice uses coconut powder.  You can use coconut milk to boil the rice, but it is lost when the rice is rinsed.  The rice is steamed at the end, which calls for a lid that seals properly.  Use a wet tea towel if you are uncertain.

 

These two dishes require the same effort and time as any alike everyday dishes, but some extra care is required in the sequence of the process.  The korma is done first, then the rice is started only when the meat part is done.  This is done deliberately to allow the korma to rest and develop flavour, so do plan enough time for this sequence of cooking.

 

The result is absolutely worth the extra bit of effort.

 

 

Ingredients

For the korma

750 g lamb shoulder, cubed

1 ½ cup plain yogurt

1 ½ cup cashews, roasted

2 onions, finely chopped

1 ½ tbsp. of your favourite garlic/chili/ginger mix or your own fresh stuff

1 ½ tbsp dry masala, your favourite mix

2 tsp garam masala

2 tbsp rose water

¼ cup apple cider or white vinegar 

2 black cardamom pods (black elachi)

Seeds from 3 pods green cardamom, shelled and roasted

1 cinnamon stick

A sprig of fresh coriander leaves for garnish

Salt to taste

Pepper to taste

Oil/ghee

 

For the Persian crusty rice

1 cup basmati rice

2-3 tbsp coconut powder

I cinnamon stick

3-4 pods cardamom (green elachi)

Pinch of saffron, powdered and steeped in ½ cup hot water.

Dollops of butter

Oil/ghee

Coarse salt

Some fine salt to taste

Waxed paper to line the pot.  Proper waxed paper.

 

Here is what you do

 

Roast/fry the cashews in a dry pan until they start to show dark brown stains, then set aside to cool.  Ensure the meat is quite dry, then fry the cubes in a dry pan.  They will start to caramelise and leave some caramelisation in the pan.  You need to do this in batches, else there will be too much fluid in the pan and the meat will go grey.  Set the meat aside while preparing the sauce.

 

The sauce, in this case, is onions, fresh garlic, ginger, and chili, along with the cardamom (elachi) and cinnamon.  Add some oil to the caramelised pot, add the dry whole spices and fry for 20-30 seconds until the flavours come out, then add the onions.  Fry until translucent.  Add the fresh spices or spice paste and fry for another minute or two.  Add the vinegar to deglaze the pot.  You want the caramelisation in the sauce as stock.  Now add your favourite dry masala, the yogurt and the roasted cashews.  The cashews may be substituted with roasted almonds.  Keep a few nuts for the garnish in the presentation.  Mix thoroughly, then blitz this lot with a blender.  Check for sufficient salt.  If you don’t have a blender you need to chop the onions quite fine or grate them before frying.  The cashews may be crushed in a coffee mug with the back end of a spatula or your chef’s knife.  Or use your favourite mortar and pestle.  The coffee mug idea works a treat and you get a crunchy texture in the sauce.  

 

To this lot add the meat, turn the heat down and simmer the meat until quite soft.  Dilute the sauce with water if required and make sure it doesn’t catch.  If it does everything goes bitter and you will have to start over.  When the meat is done to your satisfaction, add the garam masala and rose water, douse the gas hob, and allow the dish to rest.

 

Now you start with the rice part.  Add water, rice, and some salt and the cinnamon and cardamom.  Boil this until the rice is partly done.  Now rinse the rice.  It will stop cooking.  This is where the cheating part of the process comes in.  Clean the rice pot, then line it with waxed paper.  Use proper waxed paper, else the paper will wilt into the rice.  Into this goes a dollop of cooking oil or ghee and about a dessertspoon of coarse salt, sprinkled around.   Do not use olive oil, the flavours clash with the rest of the dish.  Some dollops of real butter are then added before the rice is sprinkled on top.  Check and adjust for saltiness.  Steep the saffron in ¼ cup of boiling water.   Add the coconut powder to this, then sprinkle this over the rice in the pot.  Set a tight-fitting lid and cook at medium heat for another 15-20 minutes.  Don’t lift the lid, you want to steam the rice in pilau-style.  When the rice is done, lift the whole lot out of the pot by the wax paper and invert the rice between two plates.  The waxed paper will come away freely and you will have a wonderful crusty rice dish with an intact Tahdeeq.

 

For dishing up you put the korma in a dish for the table and garnish with coriander leaves and the rest of the nuts.  Serve the rice next to this.  After all, this is for a special occasion and the presentation of the food is as much part of the experience as the aromas and flavours.

 

I hope that you will enjoy this as much as we did.

 

Bon Appetit!  

 

 

 

Authored by Johan Zietsman

 

Last updated on 2020-10-25 

Poor Man's Roast

Having a small family is sometimes a hindrance to a food blogger. With just the missus and myself, things get tricky when thinking up new ways to prepare food, given the small quantity required.

The normal way around the problem is to invite friends or family over for dinner. However, that avenue has its own dangers, not the least of which is the cost of having a weekly “Come dine with me” episode playing off in your humble abode.

After some thinking and taking into account that I am under orders not to make another stewed dish, I came up with the idea of a slow roast. This one conjures up visions of a piglet, complete with apple in the mouth and so on. My humble budget does not stretch that far and I have this suspicion that most people do not have an oven that big anyway.

So, after some more reasoning, the idea formed that one can make a roast without having to buy a whole leg or shoulder cut. Chops will do if you stack them in a solid pile. One is then able to purchase only enough for the guests in the house, as you can buy chops in individual portions. Having said this, one should realise that the stack of meat  should be sufficiently bulky to resemble a whole shoulder, for example.

In my case I opted for the cheapest lamb or mutton chops I could lay my hands on. Shoulder and leg chops will do just fine. The reasoning is that  the slow roasting process will take care of any toughness anyway.

Having decided on the process and the cuts, the world is open for deciding on the style and flavours. If you have a tagine at hand, that will work brilliantly, the lid keeping the juices inside and allowing for a slow steaming process. I do not own such equipment, so I used a ceramic baking dish of suitable size. The dish has no lid, so I just covered it with some aluminium foil. A cast iron pot or saucepan will also do, as these come with a lid.

That takes care of your cooking utensils.

As for flavours, I decided on a Persian style spicing. I like the spicy flavours, but again I am under orders to prepare some less spicy dishes. This one has a perfumed spicing, very flavourful and quite rich. It goes well with the fatty meat cuts. The recipe is adapted from the book Persiana by Sabrina Ghayour. A welcome birthday present and addition to my library from my son and his fiance.

I was not able to find all the spices listed in the recipe, so I substituted some after some discussion with my local spice merchant. The lime powder was substituted with dried citrus peel.  This dried citrus peel is of my own making, being mandarin orange and satsuma peel that I dried in the oven, then blitzed in the blender.

Edible dried rose petals are also not really a part of the local cuisine, so I substituted rose water, which most larger grocers sell here in South Africa.


Sumac was something new to me, not having heard of it before. It turns out to be ground-up berries of the Anacardiaceae family of plants in the Rhus genus. Check it out on Wikipedia and on the Spice House web site.

This dish was served with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. I kept the portions medium to small, as the meat came out very rich. You may want to make this dish when the neighbours are all at home; it will count as psychological torture! The  flavours emanating from the kitchen are really something special, as is the taste.

Spice Perfumed Poor Man's Roast

1 kg lamb/mutton shoulder or leg chops
1 heaped tablespoon sumac
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried & ground citrus peel
2 tablespoon rose water
some salt flakes
some cooking oil

Process

Mix the spices thoroughly, then add some oil to make it into a paste. Add the rose water and mix well. The spices will ensure that the rose water/oil mix does not separate. Cut the sinews and fat layers of the chops to stop them from curling up during the cooking process. Coat each piece of meat thoroughly and stack them tightly in the baking dish. Add some salt flakes between layers. Cover the dish with aluminium foil or put the lid on. Allow this to marinate for and hour or so. In this case you have lots of thin layers, so it is possible to overdo the marinating time.


Set the oven to 160°C/320°F and pop the roast in the oven for three to four hours. By this time the meat should be almost falling off the bones. No need to use a knife here, you flake the meat using two forks.

This I served with mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables steamed over the boiling potatoes. A simple dish  with lots of flavour and very little work in the kitchen. It gave me time to enjoy a glass or two of red wine with the missus.

Bon appetit!


Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2015-07-29

Pagan Style Lamb Chops

I like lamb chops on the braai. But forever the meat is overdone by the time the layer of fat on the outside is done properly.

Use simple ingredients

Then the chops are definitely not OK. Cooking them until the meat is to your taste leaves the fat still mostly underdone. The chop is also then too fatty to my tastes. Even though we tend to the Banting side of diet, we still eat less fat than the French, I think.

You need hot coals

So here was an opportunity for some real creativity in preparing food. After some deliberation and much consumption of red wine and, especially at this summery time of year, lots of beer. Specifically around the braai fire. South African men treat the braai and their methods like a religion. A very serious subject indeed.

I think that the late professor Marthinus Versfeld, one of the most noted philosophers of South Africa, had it right. He reckoned that this passion for cooking meat on a braai is a leftover from primal days where our pagan forefathers regularly built an altar and offered meat to their gods. Even the Bible states this, adding that the meat was then consumed by the people. This now after the gods that be blessed the offering. Even so for the fledgling Christians of those times. The first murder also was perpetrated as a direct result of a dispute arising from an argument ensuing during a braai.

We need to heed these things, they play an important role in our daily lives.

While the braai itself is very important, the end result is even more so. Imagine dishing up an overdone lamb chop to your loved ones. My wife will simply not eat it. These disputes then rage long after the braai.

So, as you will understand, this subject is very near and dear to my heart.

Cook the meat on all sides

Preparing meat on a bed of coals is not a simple matter for some. In this case, the answer was not that difficult. In the end, the trick is to understand heat transfer and keeping the soft parts of the meat away from heat until the fat is done to a nice crisp state. Then the meat part is done. A two stage process.. Once I had figured this, the rest was easy. You assemble the chops back to a block as for a roast. Use some kebab skewers. Or you buy a roast from the start. For this experiment I used a lamb rib roast.

All sides...

Pat coarse salt all over the outside of the cut, then put it fat side down over very hot coals. Use a can of water placed among the coals to help with preventing flames. The steam will displace some of the air, so this helps. Make sure you don't scorch the fat, it will go bitter. Braai the cut on all sides. The bony parts may be well done, it is OK. They keep the heat away from the inside.

Don't scorch the meat

Once the fat and both bony sides are done to your satisfaction, you take the meat off the fire and cut it into chops. Or remove the skewers.

Now is the time to spice and salt your chops with your favourite braai salt or other condiments. I opted for a Spanish style basting. This is made with equal amounts of freshly crushed garlic, olive oil and red wine vinegar. If you don't have red wine vinegar, use normal vinegar and add a dollop of wine from your glass.

The inside is still raw

Baste regularly and royally. This activity forms part of the psychological warfare that you wage against the rest of the neigbourhood downwind of your braai, so take care. Also, if you make a mistake here, the whole neigbourhood will know, even upwind of where you are. I don't know how this works, I just know that this type of bad news travels in weird directions.

Simple basting, applied with a sprig of rosemary

By this time your coals would have cooled down sufficiently to make the rest of the cooking process a cinch. Cook the meat to your taste, then remove to the side of the coals to keep them warm and allow them to repose. This will help to develop the flavour and allow the heat to disperse evenly through the meat. The colour of the meat will also go to red as opposed to being a dull, unappetising grey.

I served this with blinis and sour cream, adding some steamed broccoli. Nothing to be scared of, a blini is a form of Russian bread. There is a gazillion recipes on the internet. My version was making a basic flapjack batter, adding grated baby marrows and some chopped grass onions. Spices were some coriander and cumin powder, salt and pepper.

Do the meat to your taste

These were baked in a dry pan, scooping spoonfuls of the batter onto the hot pan. These you can do beforehand, they warm up nicely afterwards. Dish up with some sour cream and onions, tzatziki or the like.

The meat is quite rich, so beware of mixing this with red wine and beer.

There, you are done. This dish goes well with a full bodied red wine.

Bon appetit!


Authored by Johan Zietsman.

Last updated on 2014-12-14

Exploring Stews In A Wintry Cape Town: Moroccan Lamb And Lentils

I have not really had a real chance of cooking at home for a while as I was mostly occupied with sailing instruction. This led to some severe withdrawal symptoms for a decent slow cooked dish on a cold winter's evening.

Well, such an opportunity came about this weekend, with a cold front passing Cape Town towards the end of the week, bringing with it some real winter. The weather outside is quite cold now, with the tail end of the cold front still with us.
Having had some time to consider, I thought it was time to explore the culinary styles of North Africa. Morocco came to mind, as quite a few fellow bloggers seem to like the flavour and there is a plethora of recipes on the internet. I had a short spell or two of trying to find Moroccan spice mixes, with varied results. Mostly because I got distracted by other things.

Like the sailing thing, for instance.

However, withdrawal symptoms are wonderfully forceful, in this case a positive force. I did some more research on the internet and found that the spice mix is quite easy to assemble from basic spices. All of which we have in the house.

This gave the proper impetus and I went ahead. This was a real exploration, with me not having a clue what Moroccan food tastes like. I have never been there. In addition, the spice mixes that you find in places other than Morocco would probably be adapted to local palates.

Having said that, there is also a mitigating factor in that each local Moroccan Mama cooking for the family probably has her own version of what is right. Hence my version would then be Moroccan lamb and lentils a la The hungry Sailor.

Basic ingredients for this dish consist of lentils, tomatoes, lamb or beef and perhaps a potato or two. Definitely an onion.  Spices are varied, but seem to include a hot chilli, cumin, paprika, ginger, garlic, a little cinnamon, turmeric and some lemon juice.  And of course some salt and pepper to taste. This from my research on the internet.

The process differs between places and cooks, so there I knew I was in my own well-known territory of creative processes. No pun intended.

Most of the standard recipes call for olive oil. However, if you want decently caramelised onions you need to fry them in real butter, which I did. I also used some of my masala paste, as it contains all of the spicy ingredients, i.e. ginger, garlic, chilli and a little turmeric. Or you can use a slice or two of fresh ginger, a fresh chilli and garlic to taste.


Also, I like to brown the meat a little before adding the other ingredients. The caramelised part of the meat adds some flavour to the inherent stock formed by the cooking process.

Speaking of meat, most of the recipes call for boneless cuts. I beg to differ, as I think that the marrow adds some fatty content which adds to the taste and keep the dish from being too dry.

The end result was quite delicious. I shall make it again. It is a differs from the Northern Indian and Pakistani style curries that we usually make at home. This dish is not as spicy, although flavourful.

Containing lots of legumes which needs to be well cooked, this dish lends itself to very slow cooking. Many of the recipes on the internet go for the fast and furious option of a pressure cooker, which I abhor. I also prefer to cook the meat very slowly.

The list of ingredients seems long, but please bear in mind that I am using pure spices, not spice mixes. You may add some honey, golden syrup or sugar if you think that the tomatoes and lemon juice will make the dish too acid. Many of the recipes on the internet include honey.

We had this dish with rice, but it is certainly well worth the effort to make rotis or chappattis as a side dish.

So here goes.

Ingredients

500 g Lamb. We used some lamb knuckles and a leg chop, cut into cubes.
1 cup lentils. We had brown lentils
1 can (400g) whole peeled tomatoes
1 fresh tomato, coarsely chopped
2 small potatoes, coarsely cubed
1 sachet tomato paste
1 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon masala paste. (Recipe here)
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 generous teaspoon paprika. I used the smoked and hot version
1 generous teaspoon ground cumin
1 clove garlic, mashed
1 tablespoons lemon juice
300 ml vegetable stock. I used 2 generous tablespoons of Ina Paarman's stock in boiling water.
salt and pepper to taste
pinch of ground cinnamon
small sprig of fresh cilantro or coriander leaves for garnish
dollop of real butter
some olive oil for frying

Process

Melt the butter in the pan and add the onions. Fry the onions until they are translucent and getting brown on the edges, then add the mashed garlic and the masala paste.


Fry this for another minute or so, then add the olive oil and the meat.

Fry the meat until it is brown enough to taste, then add the canned tomatoes, the fresh tomato, the tomato paste and all the dry spices. Add the lemon juice and the vegetable stock. Mix through thoroughly and turn the heat right down to let the pot just simmer. Add salt at this stage. I now regularly use Maldon or other flaky sea salt.


Add the lentils after twenty minutes to allow the meat to cook a while. The lentils will cook faster than the meat. Simmer the dish for another half an hour or so, until the meat starts to go tender. Then add the potatoes.

Simmer until the everything in the pot is tender to your taste, then turn the heat off and add the coriander leaves. Allow the dish to rest and develop flavour for at least an hour.  I use an enamelled cast iron pot. They cook a lot better than anything else and this resting of the food works better with their heat retention characteristics.

Now cook the rice. This will force you to let the dish rest! Then dish up.

Bon Appetit!


Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2014-05-10