more adventures in cooking

[kindkit]

Lunch:

Curried goat with mustard oil and potatoes
Okra simmered in spiced buttermilk with curry leaves

This is another of my region-crossing combos that would probably appall anyone who really knows Indian cuisine (the goat dish--adapted from a recipe that called for lamb, but I'm told goat is actually much more commonly used in India--is Bengali, the okra dish comes from Gujarat on the other side of the country) but I thought they went well together. The goat cooked up surprisingly tender and I found it less gamy than lamb, but also fatty and full of gristle and bone. Lamb is probably the better bargain in the US.

The okra is just fantastic--soft but not slimy and just spicy enough. The combination of tangy dairy with curry leaves is one of my new favorite flavors (also found in the rice with yogurt that I posted about recently), and it goes wonderfully with the earthy greenness of the okra.

Both recipes came from Raghavan Iyer's 660 Curries, from which I am increasingly determined to try every single dish.

Comments

[st_aurafina]

This sounds like the best book ever, seriously. Was it hard to get hold of the goat meat? (No, Danielle, they come trip-trapping over the bridge daily.)

We're hoping to plant a curry tree (shrub? bush?) so we can get fresh curry leaves. I like the dried ones well enough, I'm sure they're nicer fresh. (We can sometimes get fresh ones at the supermarket, but they're kind of tough and fibrous. I'm sure they're not at their best.)

[kindkit]

It's an awesome book. Well, mostly. The definition of "curry" gets stretched a lot, somewhat at the expense of showing how meals are normally structured in Indian cuisine. And Iyer treats anything he can't possibly define as a curry (breads, sweets, relishes and pickles) in a very perfunctory and limited way. I also sometimes find myself wishing for more information about regional cuisines and about which dishes are commonly cooked in India and which Iyer invented for the cookbook. But having said all that, I've loved almost every single recipe of Iyer's that I've cooked.

I found the goat meat at a big "international grocery" in Albuquerque, the larger town that's about an hour from where I live. I might well have been able to find some at one of the local Mexican markets, but I was in the store and there it was.

What dish are you making where you eat the curry leaves? I thought they weren't usualy eaten, just simmered in a dish to add flavor. From what I've read, on the rare occasions they're eaten, they're either fried (which makes them crisp) or shredded very fine. Anyway, I haven't tried the dried ones, but from what I've read they have much less flavor and aroma than fresh.

[st_aurafina]

I've just been crumbling the dried leaves in when I make a curry - at the same time as I throw in the mustard seed, and they kind of vanish in. Their taste is mild, but I can definitely taste them, and the flavour seems to deepen the next few days after I've made the dish.

Maybe I'm supposed to take the fresh leaves out, like bay leaves? I've got Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible, and she doesn't say to take the leaves out, but maybe that's obvious?

[kindkit]

From what I've read, whole fresh curry leaves that are simmered in a dish are normally taken out, or just pushed aside by the eaters. They can be eaten (I was googling just now and found a bunch nutrition-crank blogs insisting that eating them is a panacea), but they're pretty strong tasting and I don't find the texture of the simmered ones appealing.