Goat Curry

Taken from the wonderful book Made In India by Meera Sodha. You could probably make this with lamb, but cooking this was also a fun excuse for me to find the halal market in my area where I could buy some goat meat, so maybe this will lead you on a small adventure if you cook it.

Ingredients

2 inch piece of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

1 fresh green chile, finely chopped

4 Tbsp. canola oil (or other vegetable oil that works for you)

1 tsp. cumin seeds

0.5 tsp. black peppercorns

1 cinnamon stick

1 large onion, sliced

2 lbs goat shoulder, chopped into 1-2 inch cubes (hopefully the butcher can do this for you, because likely there's going to be some bone in there)

2 tsp. ground coriander

1 tsp. ground cumin

0.5 tsp. ground turmeric

1.5 cups hot vegetable stock

3/4 lb. potatoes

1 tsp. chili powder

Recipe

1. This first step is skippable, but I took my goat and seasoned with a bit of salt and ground cumin and cooked it sous vide for 12 hours (I forget the exact temp but it was around 160 F) to soften it up so I could remove all the bone shards before adding to the curry. You totally don't need to do this, but it came out really nicely when I did.

2. Pound the ginger, garlic, and green chile with a pinch of salt in a mortar and pestle to form a fragrant paste

3. Pour the oil into a large heavy pan like a dutch oven over high heat

4. Add the cumin seeds, peppercorns, and cinnamon stick once the oil is very hot and stir fry for 1 minute

5. Add the onion and cook for another 5 minutes until the onion is translucent

6. Add the ginger, garlic, and chile paste, then fry for another 10 minutes at which point the onion should be nicely browned. You might need to adjust the heat to medium depending on how hot your stove gets in order to not burn the onion

7. Add the goat, as well as the coriander, cumin, and turmeric, stir everything up then pour in the stock.

8. Bring to a boil and then simmer with a lid on your pot, and cook for one hour (if you did the sous vide goat step earlier you can skip this part)

9. Peel and chop the potatoes into 1 3/4 inch cubes and add to the goat with 1.5 tsp. salt and the chili powder. Stir and cover the pot, and leave to cook for 30 minutes to soften the potatoes.

10. Adjust final seasoning and then enjoy!