Camellia's Lamb Rogan Josh

 While Caitlyn and I were off at the movies watching Beauty and the Beast, John was cooking up a storm. His version of Camellia Panjabi's Lamb Rogan Josh was just beautiful. Lamb is my favourite curry meat albeit a bit fatty. Boiling the meat before cooking really solved that without compromising the flavour (ginger also helps). 

This is a really fragrant curry as it uses many spices which John purchased from Spice Invasion, Royal Oak. 

Lamb Rogan Josh

From Camellia Panjabi’s “50 Great Curries of India”

Serves Four

700g lamb, diced

4 cloves garlic, chopped

Salt

2 teaspoons chilli powder

1 teaspoon paprika

100ml yoghurt

250g shallots (I used onions)

Oil

4 cloves

2 black cardamoms

4 green cardamoms

2 bay leaves

1 blade of mace

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground fennel seed

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

Boil the lamb (and any bones) with the garlic and some salt in 2 pints of water for 20 minutes. Remove the meat and set aside, reserve the cooking water.

Fry the onions until lightly browned. Add the cloves, cardamom, bay leaves and the mace and fry for one minute. Add the coriander, fennel, ginger, turmeric, chilli powder and paprika with two tablespoons of water and stir continuously for two minutes.

Add the meat, cook for five minutes. Lower the heat, add the yoghurt and cook for another five minutes.

Add salt and the reserved cooking water (topped up with tap water if necessary to make 800ml). Cook until tender, remove the blade of mace and the cardamoms if you can find then - they are unpleasant if you bite into them).