Mutton Lazeez Hundi : tender oh so tender , delicious oh so delicious

So here is what happens when you take up a massive project. Lunch for 4 with no help in the kitchen and a dinner for 4 as well. The cook was given holidays the grandmother went away on a trip to Sambalpur, I took up the entire responsibility of lunch and dinner with two different guests for each meal and the only help was the mother going to the market. Thank God for that. Now here is what happens when your mother hardly knows her way around the kitchen. You organize work and well hope your guests like em all but with the chaos forget to document your dishes step by step because there is the larger task of making sure your guests go back happy .

While my first guest was a lovely gentle lady my guest for the night was a food connoisseur which made me a little bit nervous, but then I shook off my nervousness and chop, lock , stock it was.

So,  a dinner party without red meat is considered unforgivable by my father so quite naturally there had to be a meat dish. I will be honest here,  I like experimenting, so no matter how successful my previous dishes might have been I like trying out new dishes and so went on a recipe hunt and the description of the Lamb lazeez Hundi on NDTV's site was too tempting to resist. I made a few changes such as using half the amount of ghee because well who needs 500gm of ghee for kilogram of meat? Maybe some do but having made enough number of dishes and considering  the fact that both my father's and the guest's age  I reduced it down to 250gm. The result was fantastic. The meat was deliciously soft due to a certain easy trick up my sleeves, the guest was happy and delighted and a very happy father who still believes in "praise the child spoil their future"

So I am very new to this world of blogging and though with time have become much more blogger friendly by capturing each and every picture etc in October I was still quite naive and so had not taken pictures because wanting to serve it hot form the pot I started cooking the meat exactly at 6 p.m. , 3 hours prior to the appointed meal time.

So these are requirements:

900gm of goat meat
250gm of ghee
5 chopped onions
1.5 heaped tablespoonful of thick ginger paste
1.5 heaped tablespoonful of thick garlic paste
3 large bay leaves
4 to 5 green cardamom
Cinnamon stick, now I can never give the exact metric measurement but say when ground it should yield 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 tsp mace
2 tsp dried ginger powder (sonth)
5 to 6 tomatoes
2 cups yogurt whisked into  smoothness
4 tablespoonful of cream

Here is where I made some chnages. I did marinate my meat for about 3 hours even though the recipe did not call for it with half the amount of ginger garlic paste and salt.
Heat the ghee and add the finely sliced onions and fry till golden brown. Add remaining ginger garlic paste. Add all the spices. I pound the spices roughly before adding them. add tomato paste which has been blanched and skinned and bring to slow boil and simmer till the oil comes out stirring from time to time.
Add mutton and mix well and cook for 5 to 10 minutes stirring continuously and add about 1 litre of water. Now the recipe had asked you to cover and cook for 30 minutes for meat to become tender. I cooked for an hour and yet the meat was not of the  melt in the mouth texture and so I used this trick which will really help you. I put everything in a pressure cooker and put it on low flame. It took about 45 minutes for the first whistle. Then I transferred it back in my big wok and brought it to a boil and added the yogurt very quickly while continuously stirring to make sure the yogurt does not split. It did not, this was a helpful hint from the original recipe. Cooked it on low heat till the gravy became nice and thick. Served it with the cream on top.

Ah doesn't it make you feel extra special when a dish you cook becomes a raging hit especially with a connoisseur :)

This dish is truly fit for a Lahori Prince. The subtraction of the ghee did not make any difference it was still very rich and well with the mutton's fat it was delicious