I wanted this blog to be part-South Asian cooking primer, part musings on Mediterranean/American/Italian cuisine and part dessert food-porn. I haven’t had much opportunity to cook South Asian food post baby no.2, mainly because I’ve been blessed with my mom’s good old home cooking most of the time.

But since it was Eid ul Fitr and my mom ran off to the homeland for a month, I got a chance to whip up some of the good stuff. The stuff that when I asked my husband to give a taste, rolled his eyes back and said “THIS is what makes the world go round”. Now, I won’t take all the credit. It’s a pretty standard curry recipe: onions, garlic, spices – with the exception of tomato paste. That’s a nifty little trick I learned from my mother in law. Intense tomato flavor and meat tenderizer in one. But it’s the meat that makes all the difference. Goat meat, very popular in the subcontinent, not so much in the states – is so flavorful, so tender. Though not as overpowering as lamb can be. I usually get ~3lbs from the shoulder/ribs/foreshank area.

I know it looks like a lot of ingredients, but they are seriously things to invest in if you enjoy south asian cooking.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large yellow onion or 2 small
• 2 tbsps garlic/ginger paste (or 5 garlic cloves and 1.5 in ginger root, minced)
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 2 tsps cumin powder
• 2 tsps coriander powder
• 1/4 tsp cayenne powder
• 2 tsps turmeric
• 4-5 lbs goat meat (cut into small pieces)
• 2 tsp salt, plus more to taste
• 6 cardamom pods
• 6 cloves
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 4-5 peppercorns
• 2 bay leaves
• 2.5 cups water

Directions