gogji mutton | a simple stew with turnips and mutton cooked the Kashmiri way

I don't know if a true blue Kashmiri would approve of this stew but for me this Gogji Mutton curry speaks of winters. This simple stew is so good for a winter dinner, so warming that you would feel blessed if you get good turnips in your part of the world just for this mutton stew if not the vegetarian version called Gogji Nadir. I have adapted this gogji nadir according to my taste but I am sure the soul of the stew is not compromised with.

I have been cooking this gogji mutton for a couple of years and have learnt a trick to make the thin soupy gravy look almost milky in appearance and pack a punch of flavours that feels impossible with just three ingredients. Yes, apart from the mutton, there are only three ingredients that make the flavours so comforting. Mustard oil, green chillies of the thick skin variety (bajji chillies of Bangalore or Rajasthani pakoda chillies) and turnips. These three ingredients create magic in this stew trust me.

It so happens that I always cook this stew for dinners and once it is ready we both can't wait too much to be able to click decent pictures to be shared on the blog. But this time I sneaked a couple of pictures while cooking and one picture of the plate that I served for myself. The pictures are still bad but I wanted you all to create this simple Kashmiri stew this winter if you have not tasted it already.

Note how this recipe helps make an almost milky soupy gravy in this stew. The instructions typed in bold letters are the pointers. But don't worry even if the gravy looks watery, as the taste will not be affected much even in that case.

ingredients...
(2-3 servings, depending on what is served with it)

mutton on bone (curry cut) 200-250 gm
fresh turnips 250 gm
fat variety green chillies (Anahiem or any mild hot chillies) 3-5
mustard oil 1 tbsp
salt to taste
water 1.5 L

procedure...

Add the mutton and a little salt to the water in a deep stock pot (or handi) and cook on medium flame for an hour or till the mutton is almost done. Or pressure cook the mutton with a litle salt with 1 L of water.

Remove the stalks, clean and chop the turnips in irregular shaped thick slices. Try and not peel the turnips as some of the flavour will be lost if you do so. Chop the chillies in 1 inch long pieces and keep aside.

When the mutton is almost done, heat mustrad oil in a deep pan till smoking point. Now add the chopped chillies and turnips all at once and toss and stir fry till a few blisters appear on the chillies and the turnips look glazed and blemished.

This is the time the cooked mutton along with the hot stock will be poured right into the hot cooking turnips. By adding the hot mutton stock into the already sizzling turnips and chillies will make the stock look milky within seconds. Now check and adjust seasoning and simmer till the turnips are fully don, soft and disintegrate when pressed.

Serve hot with plain boiled rice. Some plain home made yogurt or raita works with it but we don't care about it when we need a hot stew in our hands, preferably served in bowls.

Less rice and more of this stew is my idea of a great home cooked meal on winter nights. Meals that we cook while watching TV and the home smells of a good stew being slow cooked in the kitchen. This stew is so aromatic that the neighbors can often get to know what is cooking, that too with such humble ingredients and not a single spice used. Simplicity brings the best from some foods. Gogji mutton is one of best example of such foods.

Hope you would try this recipe if it is not a family favourite already. There are more recipes of turnips cooked with mutton in the Mughlai way and that has it's own charm, suited for a different kind of meal but gogji mutton will always be my all time favourite light mutton stews.

monji haak from Kashmir and mutton monji haak to make it non vegetarian : ganth gobhi ki kashmiri subzi

Monji haak or monji haakh is a simple stew from Kashmir that makes beautiful use of the bulb and greens of knol khol (kohl rabi or ganth gobhi). The simplest of recipes can be the tastiest and this monji haak is one of those examples. I followed Anita's recipe a few years ago once and never cooked knol khol any other way. Even when we had loads of ganth gobhi growing in the garden, I would always cook this monji haak either plain or with boiled or poached eggs or with mutton. We love this simple and flavourful stew any which way. Another version of monji haak cooked with a little rice and a stew with knol khol and lotus stem, called monji nadru are slight variations of this recipe.

Ganth gobhi stands tall in the garden. We had about 40 of them this season.

Ganth gobhi (knol khol) leaves are so fragrant and delicious that it can't be wasted. Sadly, many people throw away the leaves and use the bulb part only. Even my gardener often discards the leaves but he has now understood that I like the leaves more than the bulb. I hardly throw any part of this vegetable if it is freshly plucked. only the hard woody base is peeled off if the knol khol is mature.

The curry is a simple recipe but I must let you know that following a simple recipe to the T is very important. As each ingredient and each little step in the recipe adds something to make it special, you can't afford to miss anything. Once you follow the recipe once and know how it turns out, you can make necessary changes to suit it to your taste.

ingredients for the monji haak
(serves 2-3, large portions)

Ganth gobhi (knol khol) 2-3 with leaves (about 600 gm)
green chillies broken 2-3 or to taste
hing 1 pinch
mustard oil 1 tbsp
salt to taste
water 2 cups

procedure

Peel the hard woody parts of the knol khol if it is mature or use it whole. Slice the bulb in half moons, the stems in one inch pieces and the leaves in large shreds. Keep aside.

Heat mustard oil in a pressure cooker pan (or a deep stockpot or kadhai), tip in the hing and add the slices of the vegetable. Toss and fry till you see few brownish patches on the margins. Add the stems and leaves at once, the green chillies and salt and toss and cook for a few minutes more.

Add the water and pressure cook for 5 minutes after the first whistle blows. Let it cool on it's own, open the lid and serve hot with plain boiled rice or as a side dish to any Indian meal.

You can adjust the consistency by adding more water or by reducing the water as per choice.

If cooking it in a stock pot or kadhai, cook covered till the leaves and slices are all thoroughly coked. It takes about 25-30 minutes or more if the ganth gobhi is mature.

To make mutton monji haak, boil 300 gm of mutton (with bone) in 500 ml water and salt to taste for a couple of hours in a stock pot, adding a little more water of required. Or pressure cook for 30 minutes. Keep aside.

Now follow the steps of cooking the ganth gobhi as above recipe of monji haak and instead of adding water, add the cooked mutton with the stock and cook again till the vegetable is cooked well. Serve as required.

We eat our meats in watery stews like this in summers and love the way it tastes so rich and yet so light on the tummy. I recently tried a lauki ka shorba with mutton after reading good reviews of a recipe from Rampur and that also became our favourite. The recipe will be shared soon.

Monji haak remains a favourite not just for being a simple stew or a patle rasse ki subzi as we call it, it is because I love the taste of ganth gobhi so much. It is a vegetable I look forward to. I still have a few left from our winter vegetables crop and they will also be cooked into this flavourful monji haak.

Did I tell you we both love this mutton monji haak as a stand alone dinner? Yes we do.

Kashmiri gushtaba recipe..

Some good days make me walk to the market, I get good produce home and make great food for ourselves. Other days I just rely on what I buy weekly. The days I get minced mutton home are the ones when I get to have an easy meal that tastes like heaven. Gushtaba is one dish that comes from heaven. Kashmir, the heaven on earth. And the dish is truly heavenly.

It helps that it gets ready within half an hour, even when I have to work on two burners at a time, it's something anyone can do who knows shaping balls and boiling water. And someone who loves to work with nice aromatic spices, and still doesn't want too spicy food. Got the picture?

A decadent curry with delicate flavors of almost sweetish fennel and green cardamom, just a bit if warm heat from dry ginger and a slight kick from red chilly powder, all flavors melded beautifully in a yogurt and cream based curry..

Can it get any better?

ingredients..
For the meatballs ...
keema (machine ground) 250 gm
ginger minced or pounded 2 tsp
2 green cardamoms pounded and powdered well
2 cloves powdered
1/2 tsp black pepper pounded
2 pinches of salt
mutton stock 3-4 cups

Mix all these together , knead the mutton mince together so everything gets mixed up properly.

For the gravy...
fresh yogurt ( I used from a tub) 200 gm
ghee 2 tsp
one medium sized onion sliced
one fat garlic clove
1 tsp fennel seeds
1-2 tsp dry ginger powder
1/2 tsp special garam masala
black pepper powder 1/2 tsp
red chilly powder 1/2 tsp
salt to taste
heavy cream 3 tbsp ( I used malai)
fresh mint 4-5 leaves or dry mint a pinch

Most people use fennel powder in the yogurt gravy but I prefer grinding whole fennel along with the fried onion. This gives a better flavor as the fennel is freshly ground. Sieving the onion and fennel seeds paste ensures you get a smooth gravy.

procedure...


Using freshly ground keema is the key to a great tasting Gushtaba. Most people like pounding the meat fresh at home. But that is something I can't bring myself to do. So I get my freshly machine ground meat from the market as I said earlier. Just get a few bony pieces too to make the stock.




Boil the bony pieces of mutton in a pressure cooker with 3 cups of water , 2 bay leaves and a small piece of ginger. This will be stock for boiling the meatballs. The stock can be made ahead and even can be used for making soups.

Make oblong balls with the mince meat mix while you have kept a pan of boiling mutton stock on stove. Gently slide the oblong balls into the boiling stock with salt to taste. Let them boil on gentle heat till you do the preparations to make the curry sauce.


The meatballs will be fished out from this boiling stock and the stock will be saved to make a soup for another meal. The same can be used to adjust consistency when the yogurt gravy is cooking. Alternately, you can boil the meatballs in plain water, in that case the meatballs loose some flavor but are still great tasting as the dish is quite mildly spiced.

The meatballs take about 15 minutes to cook in the stock, they get enlarged a bit and the shape gets distorted a bit, but they wouldn't break if you don't thrash them with the ladle. Just be gentle with them.

After the meatballs get boiling, start working on the other burner with another pan. I told you , you have to work on two burners.



Heat the ghee in a pan and fry the sliced onion till pinkish brown, adding salt to minimise the time and effort as there is less ghee. Use more ghee if in a hurry.



Transfer the fried onion slices to the jar of a mixie and make a paste along with a tsp of fennel seeds and a clove of garlic. This paste has to be sieved into the cooking gravy. I do it directly into the pan when required, do it ahead of time if you can't handle it above the pan.

Whisk the yogurt well and sieve it if you have doubts about curdling the yogurt while heating. Mine anyways gets curdles a little so I just whisk it using a hand blender. Add 2 cups of water to the yogurt and whisk again.

Pour the whisked yogurt in a pan and start heating the pan on gentle flame, whisking all the while to prevent or minimise curdling , whatever the case. I work for minimising.

Now add the dry powders and the sieved fried onion paste into the boiling yogurt. Keep whisking while it boils. Add the heavy cream and mix well.


Fish out the cooked meatballs from the boiling stock and tip them gently into the boiling yogurt mix. Cook covered on lowest flame for another 10 minutes , or till he fat droplets are seen on the surface.




Cooking with the yogurt gravy, the meatballs take about 5-7 minutes more. Some people add a little ghee at this stage. You can choose to add that too. I like some more heavy cream added in the last minutes of cooking sometimes. But that is optional.

Add the mint, fresh or dried, and serve hot. It goes really well with soft chapatis or plain boiled rice. A side of fresh garden salad will be a delight to have with it.

This is a food any beginner cook can make. It looks complicated and on the table too it looks like a great effort to put together. But it's a simple dish to rustle up if you have a basic idea of balancing the flavors.

Do you like your meatballs in a more robust spicy gravy?

A keema kofta curry is to come shortly too. My personal favorite is this Gushtaba from Kashmir as the taste of the mutton is not overpowered by the spices added.

The spicier keema kofta curry is a Awadhi version of meatballs, liked by all who love the earthy spicy gravy with a stronger flavor of mutton. More about the Awadhi keema koftas some other time. Very soon though.

Enjoy Kashmiri Gushtaba till then.....

gogji nadir | turnips and lotus stem in a soupy curry ......... straight from kashmir...

Gogji nadir is turnips and lotus stem if translated. Turnips are the one seasonal outburst of goodness I enjoy along with our red juicy desi gajar ( heirloom carrots?) . These two root vegetables are so much looked forward to as they are used so frequently for my raw salads .

I love the sweetish aroma of cooked turnips and make many low fat curries with this fresh and juicy vegetable. A few of my turnip curries are being posted in a series this time . 

This gogji nadir is an authentic kashmiri recipe i found here on Anita's blog . I have been making a curry of both these vegetables together thinking it is a kashmiri curry but as i saw this recipe on Anita's blog i knew the original thing was something different than i had thought . The first trial was not very encouraging as i had used lesser mustard oil and had cooked under pressure for 8-10 minutes as instructed , but i found the lotus stem too mushy for my taste and the curry turned out a bit bland for me ... At the same time i knew the curry could be better and when i tried the next time it was an awesome flavorful curry .

This time around i used a bit more mustard oil and cooked it in a thick base handi pan , the result was great and the curry has been repeated a few more time since then . Arvind didn't like the curry much as he doesn't like these vegetables but it was an okay kind of curry for him which he can eat once in a while for a change ...

The vegetables are cut in a specific manner , lotus stems scraped lightly and cut in slanting slices , turnips unpeeled and cut haphazardly , green chillies broken into two. I wanted a more pronounced flavor of chillies in this curry without the heat and used the bigger n milder chillies 3-4 of them ( the variety is called Bangalore Torpedo ).

As there are just these three ingredients in this curry and mustard oil infused with asafoetida makes the base flavor , balancing the flavors may be difficult as happens in most of the simple curries like nenua ki subzi . Just like this nenua ki subzi ( sponge gaurd curry ), you need to love turnips to like this curry as the flavors of turnips are enhanced by stir frying them till they turn brown at the edges. A sweetish caramelized flavor which is balanced with a pungency of mustard oil and asafoetida and a sharp hit of green chillies . Lotus roots provide a nice texture to bite in . The combination is superbly healthy .

The procedure is simple but you need to keep in mind that the steps of cooking are followed rightly to bring out the desired flavors .... I did a mistake of using very less mustard oil , not stir frying enough and too much pressure cooking the first time myself....The right procedure for me goes like this...


Two tablespoons of mustard oil is heated till it smokes , a generous pinch of asafoetida is added and it quickly goes frothy . 

Add the chopped turnips and lotus stems and stir fry till the edges of turnips start browning . This step is crucial as it gives a different aroma to the finished curry .

Add water and salt to taste and let it boil and then simmer on low heat , covered. 

When the turnips turn soft , add the broken chillies and cover and cook again for a couple of minutes. That's it , the turnips turn mushy and lotus stems are well cooked but firm . 

Two large turnips and one large and thick lotus stem was used for the recipe .

If you like hot chillies you can add 2-3 green chillies but as i like the aroma of chillies more , i used the longer n milder chillies , 3-4 chillies resulted in larger amount as they are huge sized . Also , Anita cooks it in the pressure cooker and you can do that if you find it suitable , for me the pressure cooking resulted in overdone lotus stems and pan cooking was just as i wanted . If you are pressure cooking , i think try putting off the flame as soon as the first whistle blows up .

One more quick curry with simple flavors in my repertoire , even made it without lotus stem and found it interesting that the curry tastes the same , just the texture of the lotus stem is missing and the curry is much lighter....

Kashmiris eat this curry ( gogji nadir ) with rice and lots of fresh curds as Anita has mentioned . I tried it both with rotis and rice along with fresh curds , i personally liked it more with rotis .... with rice it was okay for me . A big bowl of fresh curds or a light raita is a great combination with gogji nadir , whether you are having it with rice or roti ......

I have been getting a few requests for posting curry recipes with turnips as there were no recipes with this vegetable apart from my multi grain soup and another turnip and tomato  soup . One of my friends' husband loves the flavor of turnip and i had promised her a few light curries i make ...... I am late as always but to make up for the delay i am posting a series of turnip curries in different combinations ... entirely different flavors of turnip will be unfolded in the next few posts....

Stay tuned....