Malaysian lamb curry

This is supposed to be a goat curry – but it’s hard to find goat at 3.30pm on a Sunday afternoon when you’re looking for a recipe to put up on Meateaters. So, I settled for lamb instead.

The recipe is adapted from Malaysian goat curry recipe on page 101 of Meat: Delicious dinners for every night of the week by Adrian Richardson. The result was a mild mannered exploration of the art of curry making – mild mainly, I think, because the recipe said to use a ‘small chili’. My version of small is clearly a lot different to Adrian Richardson’s version.

Here’s my version then:

Ingredients:

For the curry paste:

• 1 or 2 large onions finely chopped
• 6 crushed garlic cloves
• 2 tablespoons of grated ginger
• 1 small (or big) red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped
• 1/4 cup desiccated coconut
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 2/3 of a 400g tin coconut cream
• 3 tablespoons of canola (or vegetable oil)
• juice of 1 lime

Combine all of these ingredients in a blender and pulse to form a paste. I did not overdo the blending and so my ‘paste’ was not as smooth as some would prefer it, but the taste was good.

• 600 g lamb fillet diced into large chunks or cubes
• 1 cup water
• salt and pepper
• two tablespoons brown sugar
• juice of 1 lime

Toss the diced lamb in a bowl with the curry paste. Make sure it’s all well coated. Transfer this to a heavy bottom saucepan and add the cup of water. Add salt and pepper and carefully heat until it’s nearly boiling. Immediately lower the heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for as long as you can up to 1 1/2 hours. I cooked mine for just over an hour.

Taste about 30 minutes in and add more seasoning (chilli if you have underestimated the firepower, plus salt). Also add the brown sugar.

At the end of cooking squeeze in the lime juice.

Serve with basmati rice. Garnish with fresh mint leaves.

This is delicious and very simple to cook and prepare. Enjoy!