Lamb neck and korma curry

My Sunday Lamb Korma

Evening before.

500g white dried beans (navel)
Soak the beans overnight in plenty of water.

Ingredients

A neck of lamb cut into slices (750g)
500g of lamb mince
2 carrots
1 parsley root
¼ of a globe of Celeriac
1 small leek
3 onions
100g of small mushrooms
1 each of red yellow and green capsicum (bell peppers)
1 tablespoon of home made garam masala

1 tablespoon of curry paste made out of :
3 cloves of garlic
1 fresh red chili (mine came from my balcony)
3 pieces of ginger root in syrup
½ of one of the onions above

1 tin of chick peas
1 tin of diced tomatoes
500g of green beans (washed, sliced and blanched)

300ml of good stock
Dried coriander
Dried mint
Small amount of vegetable oil for frying

Method
Dice the onion
Dice you peppers
Dice the carrots
Slice the leek
Dice the celeriac
1/4 the mushrooms
Dice the parsley root

If you have one of those kitchen machines that can do it for you go for it, I have, but find using the knife quite satisfying.

Homemade curry paste

Dice the chilli, add together with some of the onion, 3 cloves of garlic and 3 knobs of ginger (I used stem ginger in syrup minus the syrup, because that was all I had) to a small blender (it didn’t turn it into a paste so I used my good old pestle and mortar with a bit of course salt, I added some turmeric powder, paprika powder, cumin powder and coriander powder and my own Garam Masala.



My first Chilli of the season



My Garam Masala

2 ½ cm piece of cinnamon bark
5 cloves
Teaspoon of white mustard seeds
½ teaspoon of coriander seeds
½ teaspoon of cumin seeds
½ teaspoon of black pepper seeds
6 cardamom pods
4 or 5 curry leaves
half a dried chilli (mine from last years harvest)

Heat a dry heavy bottomed pan and add all of the ingredients, when the seeds start to splutter add to a spice grinder (I have a trusty coffee grinder especially for this), if you make more than you require store it in a jar you will want some sooner than you think (I often rub it into and under the skin of a chicken).

I next put the remainder of the diced onion in a frying pan with some oil and fried until translucent, I added a chopped clove of garlic and fried this a little, added the mince and coloured,

I now added my curry paste and cooked it to remove the rawness.I transferred this to a pot and added the stock.










In the same frying pan brown the neck slices, put these in the base of the slow cooker added the diced peppers & vegetables. Next added the mince and onions, then the white beans, the tin of diced tomato’s (it does help if you open the tin first). Switch on the slow cooker (High for 4 hours) and go out for a couple of pints.

On returning, Slice some green runner beans blanche in boiling salted water add this to the slow cooker, open a tin of chick peas (you can use steeped ones but I find the tinned ones work very well) and add this, add 330 ml of full fat yoghurt and a good sprinkling of dried (or chopped fresh) mint and coriander leaves. Give it all a good stir and cook for another hour.

Just before your ready to eat, put a pot of salted water on to boil (I use the 2:1 method) add the rice and cardamom pods along with the saffron, lower the heat and allow the rice to absorb the liquid.

And that was it folks, turned out very nice, I have about 4-5 portions for the freezer and enough for tonight.