ALTHOUGH GOAT IS EATEN around the world, there are pockets of culinary culture where it truly comes into its own—perhaps none more than in India, the original slow food nation.
Take the bold meat, usually cubed or in chunks; add a sweet, sometimes fiery, but always fragrant palette of flavors; and feel little compulsion about getting dinner on the table in the next 5 minutes. Voilà: great curries.
Which are most often made in a kari, a flat-bottomed, heavy pan with a dome-shaped lid. You needn’t have such fancy equipment—that ol’ heavy Dutch or French oven will do as well, so long as you remember the point: to keep every drop of steam in the pot, condensing back and bringing elegant intensity to the dish as the flavors meld. Or as Huck Finn says of his favorite kind of cooking: “The juice kind of swaps around and the things go better.”
Truth be told, to say you’re making a curry is to say nothing. Curry simply means “blend,” as in a mash-up of spices, usually dried (although wet pastes are used in India and preferred in Southeast Asia, where curries have spilled into the local cuisine and been morphed by indigenous braising traditions).
Given that curry is simply a blend and given that a mind-boggling array of herbs and spices is available worldwide, there are probably as many curries as there are cooks who make curry. Some blends are passed down as family traditions; others, adapted from this or that chef’s recipe. Some are bottled; the best aren’t.
Despite the apparent freedom in this open-ended arrangement, it all works out about as well as an open marriage. In other words, it doesn’t. All that freedom gives way to earnestness. That’s also the thing about swingers: They’re so damn serious about being swingers.
In terms of curries, questions of authenticity swamp the open-ended creative process. Soon enough, someone gets up on a pedestal somewhere to proffer their curry as the ur-dish, the one from which all the others sprang.
All cooking is interpretation. Go out on any cooking Web site and read the responses to the posted recipes. Everyone morphs and changes ingredients. In other words, they interpret. Did they make the original? Not exactly. But did they make an original? You bet. And that’s the spirit of curries: an interpretation, with lots of spices. Bruce’s are a collection of somewhat similar techniques, all astounding with goat, the juices being swapped around a bit. About the way it should be.
With this advance notice: You’ll need a good spice drawer. Remember when Marge Simpson found a spice rack at the town’s flea market? “Eight bottles?” she asked, puzzled. “Some must be repeats.”
Curries take a full rack, bigger than the one Marge found. And even dried, the spices should be “fresh.” Dried spices do indeed have a shelf life, sometimes as little as six months if there are chiles in the mix, perhaps up to a year or so with dried herbs. In no case should the dried spice have a tealike tang or dusty aroma. Smell your bottlings and determine which are beyond the pale.
But don’t be deterred. With lots of spices on hand, you’ll start down a road to real food, to real flavors, far from the processed, bland stuff that all too often passes as dinner. You’ll always have plenty of spices at the ready, for more flavor in every bite—and more curries, too.
And one more thing: As we go through these five curries, watch to make sure you’ve got the right sort of stew meat: bone-in or boneless.
This traditional curry with dried apricots is sweet and savory, a comfort-food delight. Bruce calls for Turkish apricots, rather than the more familiar California variety, because the Turkish ones are a little sweeter, a better foil to the many spices. These apricots also hold up well during long stewing. Admittedly, there are about a million ingredients to this thing; but in reality, it’s just a dump-and-stir.
2½ pounds (1.2 kg) bone-in goat stew meat, preferably shoulder chops or neck slices (see this page)
¼ cup (60 ml) cider vinegar
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, halved and used in two places in the recipe
3 tablespoons peanut oil
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1½ teaspoons fennel seeds
1 teaspoon whole cloves
½ teaspoon saffron threads (see this page)
1 large yellow onion, halved, then sliced into very thin half-moons
1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
2 large garlic cloves, minced
½ cup (120 ml) reduced-sodium chicken broth
3 tablespoons reduced-sodium tomato puree
1 tablespoon packed dark brown sugar
½ cup (115 g) sliced almonds
12 dried apricots, preferably Turkish apricots, halved
1 teaspoon salt
Cooked long-grain brown rice, like brown basmati
1. Combine the meat, vinegar, coriander, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, and ½ teaspoon of the black pepper in a big bowl until the meat is well coated in the spices. Set aside at room temperature.
2. Heat a large Dutch or French oven over medium heat. Swirl in the oil, then add the cumin seeds, fennel seeds, whole cloves, and saffron. Stir over the heat until the seeds are fragrant and popping, about 2 minutes.
3. Dump in the onion slices; cook, stirring to break them up into individual rings, until translucent, about 3 minutes. Stir in the ginger and garlic; cook for about 15 seconds.
4. Pour the meat into the pot. Make sure you scrape all the spices and juices out of the bowl into the pot as well. Cook, stirring often, until lightly browned, about 10 minutes.
5. Pour in the broth, then stir in the tomato puree and the brown sugar. Keep stirring over the heat until the latter two are fully dissolved, also getting up any stuck-on spices or browned bits along the pot’s bottom.
6. Once the mixture is at a good simmer, cover the pot, drop the heat to low, and simmer slowly for 1 hour, stirring once or twice.
7. Stir in the almonds, apricots, salt, and the remaining ½ teaspoon black pepper. Set the lid back in place and continue simmering slowly until the meat is gorgeously tender, no need for a knife whatsoever, about 1 more hour for shoulder chops, 2 more for neck slices, stirring a couple of times. When done, set the pot off the heat, covered, for 10 minutes, so the flavors can come to their full fruition without a final blast of heat. Serve it over cooked brown rice.
Want to take these goat dishes over the top? Make your own goat stock. Buy 4 pounds (1.8 kg) of goat bones, like back ribs and other gnarly cuts without too much meat on them. Set them on a lipped tray in a preheated 400°F (205°C) oven for about 20 minutes, or until they begin to brown nicely. Dump them into a big pot; scrape any browning goodness from the tray into the pot as well. Add a couple of quartered small onions, a few chunked-up carrots, and some celery leaves (those inner feathery bits from the head), as well as a couple of bay leaves and a teaspoon or so of whole black peppercorns. Fill the pot with water, bring it to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low and continue cooking at the slightest bubble until reduced, golden, and absolutely irresistible, 7 to 8 hours.
Want it all to go faster? Then do it in a pressure cooker: Seal everything up, bring the pot to full pressure over high heat, then drop the heat to medium and go for 50 minutes; take the pot off the heat and let the pressure drop naturally back to normal, following the manufacturer’s instructions. In either case, strain the stock, toss out the spent bones and vegetables, and freeze that stock in 2-cup (480-ml) containers until you’re ready to use them.
It means “double the onions.” Boy, is it accurate. All those onions are caramelized into nothingness, like French onion soup, but spicier, more herbaceous. If that’s not enough for you, the bowls are topped with bits of cashews and sunflower seeds fried in butter. Just make sure both are not salted, to avoid a salty zap on this fine stew.
2½ tablespoons (¼ cup (60 ml]) clarified goat butter (see this page)
3 medium yellow onions, halved and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger
5 medium garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2½ pounds (1.2 kg) boneless goat stew meat, cut into 1-inch chunks
1½ cups (360 ml) reduced-sodium chicken broth
⅓ cup (76 g) stemmed, chopped fresh mint leaves
⅓ cup (76 g) stemmed, chopped fresh cilantro leaves
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground coriander
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
¼ cup (115 g) chopped roasted unsalted cashew
2 tablespoons unsalted sunflower seeds
1. Melt 3 tablespoons of the clarified butter in a big Dutch or French oven over low heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden and super-soft, 40 to 45 minutes. Be patient. If the onions brown, drop the heat further and stir more often.
2. Add the ginger, garlic, and cayenne. Stir over the heat for a few seconds, just until aromatic, then add all the meat. Cook, stirring often, until it browns on all sides. There should be no raw spots anywhere.
3. Pour in the broth and scrape up any browned bits on the pot’s bottom. Then cover the pot, reduce the heat to low, and simmer slowly until the meat is quite tender, 2 to 2½ hours, stirring occasionally.
4. Stir in the mint, cilantro, cinnamon, coriander, cardamom, cloves, cumin, and nutmeg. Cover and turn the heat to the lowest setting you have, just to keep the stew warm.
5. Melt the remaining 1 tablespoon clarified butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the cashews and sunflower seeds. Fry until lightly browned and a little crisp, about 3 minutes. To serve, dish the stew into bowls and sprinkle the nuts and seeds on top.
Split chickpeas suck up moisture, continuing to dry out in storage. Depending on how long they’ve been stored, yours may be wetter or drier than Bruce’s. In other words, you’ve got to eyeball this stew as it cooks to make sure it keeps simmering away, thickening up, and turning luscious without going dry and scorching.
Of all the curries, this may be the most rib-sticking, the most substantial. It’s a garlicky yogurt-based mélange, made with channa dal—that is, split chickpeas without their hulls. Look for them in east Indian markets or order from online suppliers. They pack a wallop of earthy flavor as well as lots of fiber (something you may need after all this goat). Serve the stew over long-grain basmati or jasmine rice, with some minced mint or cilantro for a garnish.
¼ cup (60 ml) clarified goat butter (see this page)
1 large onion, halved and sliced into paper-thin rings
13 medium garlic cloves: 3 minced and 10 slivered and saved for later
1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
½ teaspoon coriander seeds
¼ teaspoon ground mace
3 small fresh hot red chiles, stemmed, cut lengthwise, and seeded if you’re sane, left unseeded if you’re nuts
One 4-inch (10-cm) cinnamon stick
6 cardamom pods
5 whole cloves
1 bay leaf
1¾ pounds (800 g) boneless goat stew meat, cut into 1-inch (2.5-cm) chunks
3 cups (720 ml) reduced-sodium chicken broth, plus more as needed
2 cups (480 ml) plain goat yogurt
1 cup (250 ml) channa dal
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lemon juke
1. Melt the clarified butter or ghee in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until the slices turn translucent, about 3 minutes.
2. Stir in the 3 minced garlic cloves, the ginger, turmeric, coriander seeds, mace, chiles, cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, cloves, and bay leaf. Keep stirring over the heat until ridiculously aromatic, about 1 minute.
3. Add all the stew meat and stir over the heat until lightly browned, certainly without a single bit of raw color, about 10 minutes.
4. Pour in the broth and scrape up any browned bits on the pot’s bottom as the liquid comes to a full simmer. Then stir in the yogurt and the channa dal.
5. Once the mixture is bubbling away, cover the pot, reduce the heat to low, and simmer slowly until the meat is tender and the stew has thickened with the melting lentils, between 2 and 2½ hours. You’ll need to check it occasionally: Stir a few times and add broth in ¼-cup (60-ml) additions if the thing is drying out.
6. Toward the end of the stew’s cooking, heat the peanut oil in a large skillet over low heat. Add the 10 slivered garlic cloves, then stir over the heat until they’re crisp and a little brown at the edges.
7. To serve, stir the salt and lemon juice into the stew, then take the pot off the heat and let it sit, covered, for 10 minutes to blend the flavors. Remove the cinnamon stick and bay leaf; then ladle it up, topping each bowlful with some of the fried garlic.
By the way, the whole cloves in the stew are a pain to remove—and often aren’t removed in traditional preparations. They’ll soften but will indeed provide a pop of flavor in some bites. The choice is yours: to drive yourself batty fishing them out or to enjoy the bold bang they’ll provide.
Not all curries are Indian. Masaman—a.k.a. Moslem—curry is a Southeast Asian dish, a blend developed when the trade routes between India and Indochina intersected, bringing spices into contact with other culinary traditions. In this stew, the curry is a coarse, wet paste, not a dried blend, stocked with lots of aromatics, some perhaps a little unfamiliar. They’ll melt into each other, forming an extravagant range of flavor undertones. Be cautious if you decide to substitute one of the ready-made bottlings of Masaman curry paste; these are often ridiculously hot without any sweet and savory balances to develop the nose.
2 dried New Mexico red chiles, stemmed, seeded, and torn into large bits (see this page)
Boiling water
2 large shallots, peeled and quartered
1 lemongrass stalk (tender white part only), very thinly sliced
One 2-inch (5-cm) piece of fresh ginger, peeled and diced
6 medium garlic cloves, peeled and slivered
½ cup (115 g) thinly sliced cilantro roots
1 teaspoon shrimp paste
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
5 whole cloves
30 (or so) tiny black seeds from green cardamom pods
One 4-inch (10-cm) cinnamon stick, broken into two pieces
2 tablespoons goat butter (or unsalted cow butter, if you must)
3 pounds (1.4 kg) bone-in goat-neck slices (see this page), shoulder chops, or even back rib slices
1 cup (240 ml) coconut milk
1 cup (240 ml) reduced-sodium beef broth
3 tablespoons fish sauce (see this page)
3 tablespoons grated palm sugar or dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons tamarind puree, or 1 tablespoon tamarind concentrate
½ cup (115 g) roasted unsalted peanuts
1½ pounds (680 g) yellow-fleshed potatoes, such as Yukon gold
1. Drench the chile pieces with boiling water in a small bowl. Steep for 10 minutes, then drain in a colander set in the sink.
2. Place those soaked chiles, the shallots, lemongrass, ginger, garlic, cilantro roots, shrimp paste, nutmeg, cloves, and cardamom seeds in a food processor fitted with the chopping blade. Pulse, then process until smooth, scraping down the inside of the canister a few times to make sure everything is getting minced up.
This Masaman curry paste is enough for two pots of stew. Save back half in the fridge in a nonreactive covered container for a couple of weeks—or in the freezer for a couple of months. Bruce discovered that to make less was to make so little that it wouldn’t blend right in the food processor, even in a mini food processor. So since it freezes well, he thought it better to make a double batch and get the right consistency.
3. Place the broken cinnamon stick in a large Dutch or French oven set over medium heat. Toss the pieces around in there a few times with a wooden spoon until they start to get fragrant.
4. Plop in the butter and let it melt, then pour in half the Masaman curry paste. Stir this over the heat for a couple of minutes before adding all the meat. Stir until the pieces are well coated and have lost their red, raw color, about 4 minutes.
5. Pour in the coconut milk, beef broth, and fish sauce. Stir a couple of times, then add the palm sugar and the tamarind puree or concentrate. Stir until they dissolve, then add the peanuts and bring the mixture to a full simmer. Cover the pot, reduce the heat to low, and simmer slowly for 1 hour, stirring once in a while.
6. Peel and cut the potatoes into 2-inch (5-cm) pieces. Drop them into the stew, stir well, cover the pot again, and continue simmering until the meat is fork-tender, another 1 to 1½ hours for shoulder chops, another 2 to 2½ hours for neck slices or back rib bits. Remove the cinnamon stick pieces before serving.
MORE TO KNOW
When you’re buying cilantro, you can sometimes find the plants with the dirty roots still attached, particularly at farmers’ markets or higher-end grocery stores. Wash these white roots well, then slice them into thin disks. If you can’t find cilantro roots, use only the cilantro stems, not the leaves, for the paste.
Shrimp paste—kapi in Thailand, mam tom in Vietnam, and belacan in Malaysia—is available at Asian markets and from online suppliers. Made from fermented shrimp, usually left out in the sun to liquefy, it’s notoriously pungent, like old socks filled with moldy cheese and wrapped in seaweed. Shrimp paste does mellow over the heat, but not as much as fish sauce. It’s strictly for the adventurous. If in doubt, leave it out.
Both tamarind paste and tamarind puree are made from the slightly unripe fruit of the tamarind tree. It’s the sour in Worcestershire sauce. Look for it at gourmet, Asian, east Indian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American markets.
Vindaloo is often some weird excuse for chile-induced machismo. Instead, it should be fragrant, almost fruity, as well as hot. Unfortunately, as foods cross oceans or other boundaries, the flavors tend to become more pronounced, less subtle, less layered. (Just think of Chinese food in American restaurants.) Although this recipe offers you Bruce’s interpretation, you can morph the curry to your taste, adding more cayenne for more heat, or more mace for more nose, or more cardamom just because. Note that there’s no broth; the wine or vermouth will provide the requisite sweetness so that the spices come forward.
6 medium garlic cloves, peeled, then mashed with the side of a heavy knife or put through a garlic press
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground mace
¼ cup (60 ml) clarified goat butter or ghee (see More to Know)
3 large yellow onions, halved and thinly sliced
2½ pounds (1.2 kg) boneless goat stew meat, cut into 1-inch (2.5-cm) cubes
¾ cup (180 ml) dry white wine or dry vermouth
Cooked long-grain white rice, such as jasmine or basmati
1. To make a vindaloo paste, use a fork to mash together the garlic, vinegar, ginger, cayenne, coriander, cumin, dry mustard, salt, cardamom, cloves, and mace in a small bowl. Then spread this paste out onto a cutting board and use the side of a heavy knife to wipe it back and forth across the board until fairly creamy.
2. Melt the clarified goat butter in a large Dutch or French oven over medium-low heat. Add the onions, reduce the heat further, and cook, stirring often, until the onions are golden and soft, about 20 minutes.
3. Raise the heat to medium and scrape in the vindaloo paste. Stir over the heat for 30 seconds, then raise the heat to medium-high and add all the meat at once. Stir occasionally until the meat has browned and is simmering in its own juices, about 5 minutes.
4. Pour in the wine, scraping up any browned bits on the pot’s bottom as the liquid first simmers. Cover the pot, drop the heat to low, and simmer slowly until the meat is fork-tender, between 2 and 2½ hours. Serve the stew over cooked rice.
MORE TO KNOW
To make clarified goat butter, place 8 tablespoons (½ cup [120 ml]) goat butter in a small saucepan and melt it on the stove over very low heat without disturbing it. Once it’s melted (you can swirl it gently to tell), take a flatware spoon and pull the white solids gently to the side of the pan, lifting them out to discard them, leaving the yellow, now-clarified fat behind. There may still be a few bits of white floating at the pan’s bottom. If so, slowly pour the clarified butter on top into a small bowl, leaving those solids behind. It can be stored, covered, in the fridge for up to 1 month.
LESS TO DO
If you really don’t want to make your own vindaloo spice mixture, consider skipping the bottled brands, often quite unbalanced, and instead using 1 tablespoon Madras curry powder along with 6 pressed garlic cloves, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, ½ teaspoon ground cloves, and ½ teaspoon salt. But know this: The stew will still be chair-arm-grippingly hot.
