Lamb (curry) with apricots

I've bought this book the other day, and I must say it's one of the best Indian cookbooks I've seen.

The auhor is Camellia Panjabi, the founder of several restaurants: Chutney Mary, Veeraswamy and two Masala Zone. She wrote a very personal and extremely interesting long introduction, which you can browse here. I food is a good way to start understanding a culture...

So, as with other dishes Camellia gives the dish origin (Parsi here) and a few words of explanation (eat with saffron rice, use Hunza apricots).

For 4:

• 100g dried apricots
• 50 ml oil
• 2 oignons, finely chopped
• 1 cm (!) ginger
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 7.5 cm cinnamon (that's a lot)
• 6 cardamons
  
• 1,5 ts red chilli powder
• 1/2 ts cumin powder
• 2 chopped tomatoes
• 700g stewing lamb (don't look at Tesco's, they only have 3 cuts!)
• 3/4 ts garam masala
• 1/4 ts ground black pepper
• salt
• 1 ts vinegar
• 1 ts sugar (forgot this, but the dish was sweet enough)

Time: about 20 mn prep and 1 about hour cooking.

1. Soak the apricots with 1/2 ts vinegar (I used cider vinegar) and 200ml water for 3 hours (I microwaved 20s at 900W to shorten this)
2. Fry the oignons in the oil, add ginger and garlic, then cinnamon and cardamons.
   
3. Add chili, cumin, tomatoes, the apricots and the meat, bring to slow boil, add the garam masala and pepper, salt and 200ml water (I used cold).
   
4. Cook slowly until evaporation, add 100ml of water (I used hot).
5. Add a little vinegar, sugar, let rest for 10mn (on the warm hob) and serve.
   

Tags: foodings.blog.uk curry lamb apricot indian maincourse