Curry lamb soup

With the leftovers of last week's curry goat I made a cold-weather soup so steadying and satisfying that it had to be recreated from scratch as soon as possible. It was a classic case of the humble successor dish being tastier and more enjoyable than the grander original upon whose remnants it is based. I thought I would go for lamb scrag this time as I have found it so good before under conditions of long cooking.

At Turkish Food Centre in Dalston, though, they had middle neck lamb for half its normal price. The middle neck is cut into chops, fattier by far than normal chops, but with the same bone up the side and an oval yellow cross-section at the bottom (spinal cord?).

Crazy cheap! Over 800g of lamb for just over three quid. I also purchased some dried peppers from TFC because they looked nice and I  felt they might be good for enriching stews.

Ingredients

• lamb with plenty of bone
• two onions
• garlic, scotch bonnet, thyme
• handful of lentils, barley or can kidney beans
• carrots
• tin tomatoes
• curry paste

Following a similar recipe to the curry goat I sweated two onions with curry paste, chucked in some additional spices (scotch bonnet kept whole, couple cloves, some whole peppercorns) and a tin of tomatoes. I also added the dried peppers here so they had plenty of time to soften up and topped up the mix with boiling water. The aim is to cook down enough so the onions and tomatoes start to disappear and the soup is an oily red-brown.

After twenty minutes the lamb was added (brown if you fancy - I'm still on the fence) and four or five carrots cut large tipped in also. After fourty-five minutes a handful of green lentils were added and the soup simmered for another thirty minutes or so. Taste, correct seasoning and when it tastes ready then it is!

What I was looking to recreate here was the success of last week - a thick soup whose meatiness came not from big chunks of floating flesh but the deeply savoury stock. Think of the profound beefiness of the best pho as the cornerstone, augmented by a sweet richness of tomato, long-cooked carrot and meat fat and the heat of the chilli. I don't know if the extra day or two in the fridge for the ingredients of that previous dish meant the flavours had got to know each other more and had in fact become extremely comfortable in one-other's presence, but this attempt at recreation did not quite capture the savour and success of it, tasty though it was.

Easy peasy curry goat

I have tried cooking curry goat various ways, including building the spice mix from scratch as per Hugh FW's instruction, and the method I now do is a simple and easy version I have ended up settling on. I'm not sure I tasted much different be doing it from scratch Vs a decent spice paste (Pataks in this case).

Ingredients

• goat (after experimenting with different cuts I this time went for goat chops which was very meaty. I love the fact the Dalston butcher has a cut of goat in the shop just labelled 'curry goat'.)
• two onions
• tin of tomatoes
• curry paste
• garlic, scotch bonnet, cloves, thyme, brown sauce
• additional veg (optional) 

The three key steps seem to be (if I may be so bold) - use plenty of onions for a good thick sauce, cook for a long time (so the onions cook down and dissolve in the sauce and the bones can give up their flavour) and, of course, use scotch bonnets to get the distinctive Caribbean heat. I used one whole chilli for a big pot and it was plenty hot.

Start by frying the sliced onions in vegetable oil with a big tablespoon of spice paste and some sliced garlic, cloves, thyme. They just need to soften so ten minutes should do. Next, add the chilli and thyme, brown sauce (this is from HFW's recipe and he claims his mate said is considered legit among connoisseurs, I have no idea but I like the idea of adding it! it's nice to have a slightly sweet taste as part of the heat) and tin of tomatoes. Cook for half an hour to get the sauce going.

Brown the meat (look how meaty the goat is - four quid a kilo I think!) if you like, along with any other veg if you want to (I like, and added carrots and right near the end spinach and peas) and cook for one and a half hours. Plenty of versions don't have additional veg in but I like the bulking it out a bit and getting some extra bits into the meal. I did mine in the oven as I wanted to cook some sweet potatoes to have with it but other times I have successfully just used the hob. It is also lovely with rice and a crunchy slaw of cabbage, peas and carrots.

 

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