The Best Mutton Curry and Ponnanganni keerai kadayal

One quick clarification. Mutton in Asian (especially Indian) region is goat meat and lamb is sheep meat. In western understanding, lamb is meat of sheep that is less than year old and mutton is meat of older sheep. I guess they call goat meat as goat meat. Ok, now tt confusion gone hopefully, lets get to making a healthy and delicious mutton curry.

The Indian idea of cooking meat is to drown it in spices. This is to rid off the raw meat odour that is considered 'not clean' considering you are handling a dead animal, blood and its ...err...dark forces.

Secondly such spices like cumin, turmeric and fenugreek aids digestion, kills bacteria and acts as preservative. And those days, with no refrigeration, spices kept curries well in room temperature for days. This is only true for fresh ground spices. Forget about your Babas and Alagappas. Only good to last till dinner due to other stuff they add in there to build volume and save cost. If you made curries with these popular prepacked spice mix, initially the texture and taste may seem good but wait a few hours and see how the curry settles and loses its taste quickly. Don't take my words for it, go and grind your own spices and cook your curries with them, fragrant and power packed plus they taste better by the days!!

Ok, Sri Lankan cooking originated from Indian cooking. When a group of their Indian ancestors decided to pack and cross over to Sri Lankan island to escape the tyranny of Brahmins (and other aryans) long ago, they decided to come up with their own identity in every way including their curries. So Sri Lankan curries were tweaked to contain  more spices such as cumin, black pepper and chilly combined with coconut curry. They are more favourable to frying/sauteing their ingredients in ghee before turning them into curries. Besides keeping well, the general rule is anything fried tastes good. But over the years, they hv cut down on  the calories and now you hv a lot of trimmed version of Sri Lankan curries but the heat still remains. Sri Lankan curries are one of the fieriest in town.

Now that i hv had opportunity to witness a variety of curry cooking and tasting for many years, I decided to improvise and come with my own method taking into account these three factors. Convenience, nutrition and deliciousness.

Now if you consulted Mr Google, you'd find the usual recipe to making mutton curry consist of marination,  sauteing the spices and cooking. Instead here's a different method, might i say, slightly healthier and tastier.

1) The man bought a kg of local mutton (lean meat) already deboned, trimmed of fat and cut into bite size pieces, bless him. All i had to do is run them under running water before i transferred them into a deep pot with enough water to cover the meat, plonked in 4 inches of cinnamon, 5 cardamon pods, 3 star anise, 5 cloves, a bunch of unpeeled garlic, and 3 sticks of celery. Yes, celery is unusual but i find it makes the meat cook faster and adds a refreshing tang to the meat. I slow cook them for 45min-one hour till meat cooks. Once cooked , you can remove the garlic and celery, mush them and pour it back into the cooked meat.

These days, the prepacked chilly powders are really a waste of money. Again , they add so many stuff into the powders to raise its volumes that end of the day, the fire goes out of dish as soon as you switch off the stove. I prefer to prepare my own chilly and i use blended chilly made of pre soaked dried chilly.
The heat lasts forever.

2) So into the blender went 2 chopped up big onions, 1 1/2 inch cube chopped ginger, if you want more garlic you can toss a few cloves in but i already hv it in my pre cooked mutton. Add the presoaked chilly on top.
I used a good quality dried chilly, about 20 chillies. :) That is for VERY HOT. So adjust as you please. Ok, now instead of topping it with some water instead use 2 tbsp of vegetable oil and blitz. You may hv to stir the mixture a few times for proper blending of ingredients. Try not to add water as much as possible. Placing the onions at the bottom will provide enough liquid to blend the rest of the soaked and soft chilly.

3) Next heat up your pan and dry toast 2 tsp of mustard, fenugreek and cumin mixture. Pour in the blended ingredients. Now the reason i used oil is that it fries easily and adds more fragrance than using water. If you think it is oily you can always scoop up any extra oil and use it as a chilly oil on veges and eggs.

I always use fresh ground spices. Trust me it makes all the difference to your curry. So in went 2 tbsp of coriander powder, one tbsp of fennel powder and one tbsp cumin powder, saute in the chilly mix. Also add a tsp of turmeric powder. About two mins later, add one cup of water and keep stirring over medium fire.

Finally combine the precooked meat with 2 big potatoes all chopped up. Cover and let cook for another 10 mins. Stir occasionally as spices burn easy. Top up with chopped fresh coriander, curry leaves, half tbsp vinegar (vinegar and mutton really goes well) and season.

Ok, what goes well with mutton curry??? Either rasam or keerakari (pureed green vege curry), right?

I had two bunches of ponnanganni keerai i picked up at Sentul market. Ideally if you are lucky to have them grow wild in your yard, you  pick the shoots in the morning like i did when i small busying around my late grandmother. Shoots are powerpacked with vitamins and minerals. But if you are buying at a wet market they include the whole strand. So you hv to pick the shoots and the rest of the leaves separately from the strands, otherwise they'd be too fibrous.

Soak the picked leaves in lots of water with a tbsp of salt for 5 mins. This is to rid off any tiny worms and insects plus allowing sediments such as earth or stones to settle. Rinse about three times.

I had earlier pre cooked half a cup of mysore dhall with one green chilly and 2 cloves of garlic. Once cooked, combine vege, season and once cooked and still green, take off fire and let cool.

Then blitz with a hand held blender, a modern day matthu. Just a quick few seconds dont over do it. Should be a rough blend. Heat again over slow fire, dont let it boil. If you like a bit of creaminess, you can add some coconut or evaporated milk and a dash of lime juice. Saute an onion, mustard seeds and tomato wit half tbsp oil and combine. A few quick stir and its ready. Season with salt. Ponanggani keerai (green veg) has a rich smoky taste. Now you can load up on your carb, less guilty if you use parboiled rice and worry about the calories later :). Indulge, life's too short.
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