An Invitation to Indian Cooking - Madhur Jaffrey [57]
I also serve at least one kind of raita or yogurt dish; this is very easy to make and very refreshing. For good cold dishes, yogurt can be combined with boiled potatoes, with cucumber, with tomatoes and onion, with dumplings, with cooked or raw spinach, and best of all, with a combination of roasted eggplant (which you can do on the charcoal grill), raw onions, and finely minced fresh mint (see Yogurt with roasted eggplant).
For dessert I generally serve just fruit, but when confronted with guests who have a sweet tooth, I often prepare Kulfi, a rich Indian ice cream made with nuts and milk, or Kheer, a kind of cold custard made with milk and rice.
“Butterflied” leg of lamb, marinated and barbecued
SERVES 10–12
This is, quite easily, one of my favorite meat dishes. I ask the butcher to “butterfly” a 8–9-pound leg of lamb for me. The “butterflying” process involves boning the leg in such a manner that the whole piece of meat lies flat, rather like a slightly uneven piece of London broil. I then marinate it for 24 hours in olive oil, lemon juice, and a paste of onions, garlic, ginger, coriander, cumin, turmeric, mace, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, cayenne pepper, garam masala, salt, and an orange food coloring which gives it the orange look that traditional tandoori meats have. After it is well marinated, it is best grilled outdoors on charcoal, though you could do it in your broiler—with less spectacular results! It is excellent to take along on cook-out picnics (pack the meat in a couple of plastic bags and the marinade in a tight jar—take along a pastry brush for brushing on the thick marinade paste), and refrigerated leftovers taste superb the next day. It is difficult to describe what “style” this meat is cooked in. It is perhaps a combination of the tandoori school, my sister Kamal’s lamb chops, and our Indian cook’s roast mutton.
Note: You can always freeze half a butterflied leg of lamb and cook the rest. Halve all the ingredients in the marinade and cook the same way.
1 leg of lamb, 8–9 pounds, butterflied
2 medium-sized onions (1 coarsely chopped, 1 for garnishing)
A piece of fresh ginger, 3 inches long and 1 inch wide, peeled and coarsely chopped
5–7 cloves garlic (depending on preference—I use 7), peeled and coarsely chopped
⅔ cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
¼ teaspoon ground mace
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup olive oil
2½ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
½–1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional—use less if you like, or none)
½–1 teaspoon orange food coloring (Spanish bijol, or Indian food coloring obtainable in powdered form, or American liquid kind)
GARNISH
12 radishes
Put the chopped onion, ginger, garlic, and 4 tablespoons of the lemon juice in the container of the electric blender, and blend at high speed to get a smooth paste (about 1 minute).
In a bowl or a pot with nonmetallic lining large enough to hold the meat, put the paste from the blender and all the other ingredients except the meat and the onion and radishes to be used for garnishing later. Mix well.
Carefully cut off all fat and tissue from the meat, and with the point of a knife make lots of jabs in it on both sides. Put the meat in the marinade paste. Fold the meat over, or cut it into 2 pieces, if there is not room. Make a few more jabs with the knife, and be sure the paste gets rubbed into the meat and goes way inside the gashes. Cover the container and leave refrigerated for 24 hours. Turn the meat over at least 3 or 4 times during this period.
The meat is now ready for grilling. But before you start, get your garnishes ready.
Peel the second onion and slice it into very fine rounds (paper-thin if possible). Separate the rounds into rings and put them into a bowl of ice water, cover, and refrigerate.