Indian · Main
Laal Maas
- Advanced
- 50 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, warm spice humming through the middle, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 1 kg goat on the bone, in 4 cm pieces
- 150 g ghee
- 25 Mathania or Kashmiri dried red chillies, stemmed and seeded
- 300 g onions, finely sliced
- 40 g garlic, crushed to a paste
- 250 g full-fat yoghurt, whisked smooth
- 6 cloves
- 4 green cardamom pods
- 2 black cardamom pods
- 1 short cinnamon stick
- 8 g ground coriander
- 12 g fine salt
- 400 ml hot water
- 1 piece of lump hardwood charcoal, for the dhungar, never a briquette or self-lighting fuel
- 10 ml ghee, for the dhungar
Equipment
Grill
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Soak the chillies in hot water for 20 minutes, then grind them with the garlic and a little of the soaking water to a smooth brick-red paste. 20 min
- Fry the whole spices in the ghee until they crackle, add the onions and cook them only to soft and pale gold, not brown, then add the goat and sear it.
- Take the pan off the heat and stir in the yoghurt in three additions, then the chilli paste, coriander and salt, and set it back over a low flame.
- Add the hot water, cover and simmer for about 1 hour 45 minutes, until the meat is tender and a wide slick of red ghee stands clear on the surface. 60 min
- Burn the lump charcoal until it is fully ashed over and glowing, never a briquette or self-lighting fuel, which puts fuel residue straight into the food. Open a window or run the extractor, sit a small steel bowl in the pot, drop the coal in, pour the 10 ml of ghee over it, clamp the lid down for 4 minutes, then take the bowl out. 4 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Searing: the hard crust 141 recipes
- The pan keeps a hard, steady sizzle from the moment the food lands and does not fall quiet; silence within the first half minute means the pan lost its heat and the surface is now steaming rather than browning.
- It releases itself when tested: slide a thin edge under and it lifts without tearing. Anything that grips the pan has not formed a crust yet and is not ready to be moved.
- Deep even brown across the whole face, edge to edge, when it is turned under the light: no pale ring left around a browned centre, and no black patches that taste bitter on their own.
- The pan floor carries a dry browned layer that dissolves and lifts the moment liquid hits it: not a wet grey film, and not black flecks that stay put and stay bitter.
- Cut into it: the browned band is thin, a few millimetres at most, sitting straight on top of correctly cooked interior; a thick grey collar under the crust means the heat was too low for too long.
Where it goes wrong The pan was not hot enough, or too much went in at once, so the food released its water and sat in it: the surface goes grey and steams, it sticks when moved, and the crust that eventually forms arrives over an interior already cooked through.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño or Muscadet
- Also Right
- Assyrtiko or Vermentino
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with lemon
The Atlantic’s whites beside the sea’s own liquor: salinity in sympathy, acid keeping everything bright.
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