Fat lamb and piquant beef
8 March 2026 01:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI went to the supermarket to buy another month's worth of groceries (red and green lentils, evaporated milk, lard, brown rice, etc.) and came away with a pound of very heavily discounted minced lamb that was being reduced because it was (a) date expiring that evening and (b) "20% fat" (evil!evil!evil!)
So I had a quick change of cooking plans and used half of it to make a 'dry curry' from a successful recipe in my scrapbook: https://101things.wordpress.com/2006/06/17/kheema-matar-minced-lamb-curry-with-peas/
(it's very handy to have a non-tomato-based curry, though I don't have lamb mince available very often :-)
The label on the mince said that you ought to "pour off the fat" halfway through cooking (thus presumably considerably decreasing the volume of the meat!) but in this case of course it simply goes to enrich the flavour of the finished dish. I used a single one of my 'new' chillies, which are far drier and crumblier than the rather leathery old ones that have been in the kitchen for several years, and paprika instead of cayenne pepper, since I don't have any of the latter and the chillies are hot enough anyhow. This was probably a waste of paprika, since recipes normally call for it by the tablespoon and I imagine it was entirely overpowered by the rest of the ingredients!
I didn't have very many frozen peas left in the bottom of the bag, so added some finely-chopped swede that was left over from my preparations for the Piquant Beef (from the "500 Cookery Hints" 1920s cookery booklet) which I had been planning to cook that night, but had in any case left rather too late. The result was absolutely delicious, and I ended up scraping out the sides of the saucepan with a forefinger after dishing out the other two portions for future freezing. (Three meals from half a pound of meat is not stretching it all that far, but when the meat only cost £1·65 per pound in the first place it's definitely good value.)
Meanwhile the Piquant Beef, which I had intended to start at lunchtime but had left far too late, was sitting in a slow oven cooking very gently. Basically you marinate your chunks of stewing beef in vinegar beforehand, and then bake them with seasoned chopped vegetables (turnip, cabbage stalk, swede, grated carrot) and *no extra liquid* very, very slowly in a sealed casserole dish for three or four hours. I also added in an elderly chopped green chilli to provide some subliminal heat -- I have been adding those to all sorts of dishes you use them up and they are barely detectable, if at all -- and a sizeable squirt of some equally-if-not-more elderly tomato ketchup, which has been sitting around for so long that it has gone dark brown instead of red and probably needs using up likewise :-p
And at around midnight a heavenly smell arose when I lifted the casserole lid, and the bits that I tasted were extremely flavoursome. The meat had indeed created its own gravy inside the sealed container, as promised, and hadn't dried up at all, and the big chunks were incredibly tender and falling apart ;-) I imagine the key ingredient of the vinegar helps to break down the stewing beef as well as imparting 'piquancy' to the finished dish; at any rate I shall be having beef for my Sunday lunch!
(I froze the rest of the minced lamb; I can use it in meatballs, or I believe I do have some Caucasian recipes in the Russian cookbook that call for fat lamb... or possibly 'fat-tailed lamb', which is not necessarily the same thing!)
So I had a quick change of cooking plans and used half of it to make a 'dry curry' from a successful recipe in my scrapbook: https://101things.wordpress.com/2006/06/17/kheema-matar-minced-lamb-curry-with-peas/
(it's very handy to have a non-tomato-based curry, though I don't have lamb mince available very often :-)
The label on the mince said that you ought to "pour off the fat" halfway through cooking (thus presumably considerably decreasing the volume of the meat!) but in this case of course it simply goes to enrich the flavour of the finished dish. I used a single one of my 'new' chillies, which are far drier and crumblier than the rather leathery old ones that have been in the kitchen for several years, and paprika instead of cayenne pepper, since I don't have any of the latter and the chillies are hot enough anyhow. This was probably a waste of paprika, since recipes normally call for it by the tablespoon and I imagine it was entirely overpowered by the rest of the ingredients!
I didn't have very many frozen peas left in the bottom of the bag, so added some finely-chopped swede that was left over from my preparations for the Piquant Beef (from the "500 Cookery Hints" 1920s cookery booklet) which I had been planning to cook that night, but had in any case left rather too late. The result was absolutely delicious, and I ended up scraping out the sides of the saucepan with a forefinger after dishing out the other two portions for future freezing. (Three meals from half a pound of meat is not stretching it all that far, but when the meat only cost £1·65 per pound in the first place it's definitely good value.)
Meanwhile the Piquant Beef, which I had intended to start at lunchtime but had left far too late, was sitting in a slow oven cooking very gently. Basically you marinate your chunks of stewing beef in vinegar beforehand, and then bake them with seasoned chopped vegetables (turnip, cabbage stalk, swede, grated carrot) and *no extra liquid* very, very slowly in a sealed casserole dish for three or four hours. I also added in an elderly chopped green chilli to provide some subliminal heat -- I have been adding those to all sorts of dishes you use them up and they are barely detectable, if at all -- and a sizeable squirt of some equally-if-not-more elderly tomato ketchup, which has been sitting around for so long that it has gone dark brown instead of red and probably needs using up likewise :-p
And at around midnight a heavenly smell arose when I lifted the casserole lid, and the bits that I tasted were extremely flavoursome. The meat had indeed created its own gravy inside the sealed container, as promised, and hadn't dried up at all, and the big chunks were incredibly tender and falling apart ;-) I imagine the key ingredient of the vinegar helps to break down the stewing beef as well as imparting 'piquancy' to the finished dish; at any rate I shall be having beef for my Sunday lunch!
(I froze the rest of the minced lamb; I can use it in meatballs, or I believe I do have some Caucasian recipes in the Russian cookbook that call for fat lamb... or possibly 'fat-tailed lamb', which is not necessarily the same thing!)