Thursday, September 27, 2012

Roghan josh and the best way to enjoy it...


What a minimalist platter of Roghan josh, plain boiled rice and Akhrot mooli ki chutney does to you?
Brings you pure bliss.

The simplest of meals can be the most satisfying for me. I see myself gravitating towards the minimalist recipes, minimal processing of the food in terms of cooking for  few years now. May be because life makes you learn a lot of things as it throws different challenges at you. Earlier I used to prepare a full course meal every time and then fuss about how to finish everything right on the table. I would go insane when cooking for guests and prepare a whole lot of things in my frenzy. Loads of leftovers were given as parting gifts many a times and it almost became my identity, and it was not in a very distant past. Say a decade back. A lot has happened since then.

Things are very different now. The approach to cooking food changed, more nutrition per meal and more taste and enjoyment in every bite is the motto now. And that counts cooking the meals in a relaxed way, not to tax myself with too much cooking so I crib later to finish the food right on the table or managing the leftovers. This meal of Roghan josh, Akhrot mooli ki chutney and plain boiled rice explains just that.

The recipe is adapted from Anshie's blog.

ingredients..

mutton cut into 2 inch pieces on bone 500 gm
mustard oil 1/4 cup
pinch of hing
2 tsp sounf (fennel) powder
1/2 tsp sonth (dry ginger) powder
2-3 tsp kashmiri red chilly powder
salt to taste
4-5 green cardamoms
5-6 cloves
1/2 tsp garam masala (mix of green and black cardamoms, cloves, cinnamon and a little nutmeg)
1/2 cup thick yogurt

procedure...

Heat mustard oil in a thick base pan and let it come to smoking point. Put the gas off for a while till you add the first few ingredients as to prevent burning of the ingredients as well as any burn injuries on your bare hands.

Add hing and mutton pieces and bring back the gas flame, sear the meat for a few minutes. Add the fennel and dry ginger powders and mix well, keep cooking for a minute or two on medium flame.

In the meanwhile, whip the yogurt with red chilly powder and start adding the yogurt chilly mix in small batches. Stirring and bhunoing the mutton all this while. In three to four batches the yogurt chilly powder mix will be used up and the cooking mixture will be nicely red and glazed. Takes about 20 minutes.

Add about half a liter of water and salt to taste and simmer on low flame for about 40 minutes, covered with a well fitting lid. Check in between to see if there is enough water in the pan to prevent the meat from burning, add more if required and continue cooking till the meat is done and the gravy is thick like a slurry, coating the mutton pieces well.

The mustard oil will be floating on top of the cooked meat, all pigment from chillies extracted and this part of the dish is called Roghan. Serve hot. The dish improves with time and you might like to cook Roghan josh a day in advance if you have to impress someone.


The Akhrot ki chutney is very simple. Just a handful of Walnuts (25 gm) is ground together with a medium sized white Radish (100 gm) slices. Just salt to taste and a creamy tangy, nutty chutney is ready. The combination is made in heaven. The chutney is a nice substitute to raita with rice dishes like Tehri/Tahiri too. I have posted a Tehri recipe with a different version of  Akhrot ki chutney long back.


With radish it becomes a different thing altogether. I can see the digestives in Radish helping the meat to be digested well, but you wont make it for the meat being digested well, it will purely be for the good taste and good companionship on your plate.

Try this combination sometime if you haven't already.

Cheers...



2 comments:

  1. Hi sangeeta, I lingered around here on all your posts on friday and could not find a way to comment. Thanks for enabling the same now. Let me tell you I just love the way you have been blogging oflate with new recipes, new updates on your blogger activities etc. Well I am writing here to thank you for this wonderful recipe, me and my family are great lovers of this dish and everytime we used to go out we ended up ordering this, but mostly we were uncomfortable as we did not like having mutton cooked outside (not at home). And yipppee yoooh i tried this recipe on saturday and it came out very well only it was slightly teekha but just loved it. Thanks thanks and hugs (())

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    1. Thanks SSdays.
      Glad you liked it and it will be useful for your family as well :-)

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