Topic: Lamb bhuna

[livo]

Following a recipe isn't difficult and I didn't botch either.  The Bhoona is good. The Korma was not, but I now understand it to be a classic example of BIR Korma, as demonstrated by The Curry Kid among others.

The Bhoona: Would you taste and tweak the frying of onions, garlic and ginger? Maybe in the middle or end of 10 minutes bhooning the spices or immediately after adding the raw lamb, tomato, salt and sugar or after the initial 10 minutes cooking the meat? At none of these points will you know what is going to present and you would likely have to rinse your mouth. You are trusting the author.  Only after you add water and start to reduce the sauce and cook the lamb can you tell what you have. Not much you can do at this point.  Adding 2 TBSP of Garam Masala was clearly not something I would do so that was easy.

It is interesting that the last instruction is to test the sauce. For what? It doesn't say. Nor does it say what to do if it isn't right. You can't remove the excess black cardamom.

Having now cooked it, without half of the specified Garam Masala to finish, I feel able to cook it again with the simple  removal of 1 black cardamom.  Please inform us of the other obvious tweaks you made and at what points you did tastings and what to test for George.

My usual practise is to follow a recipe closely on the first occasion and make changes after that.

[Peripatetic Phil]

My usual practice is to follow a recipe closely on the first occasion and make changes after that.

As is mine, although there are times when I find myself questioning a unit and wondering whether I should assume a typo. and substitute (e.g.,) teaspoonful for tablespoonful.  On at least one occasion I have failed to make the substitution and bitterly regretted the time and ingredients wasted

[Onions]

Ghanna's chicken korma. I found a document recently where a previous member rated various recipes on here with marks out of ten. He seemed to rate that korma above almost any other recipe on this forum, as at a few years ago.

I'd be interested in trying this George, if you could point my way to it-is it on the forum? I've found myself recently appreciating a milder curry every now and then-if only for the change of taste-but I admit I haven't gone so far as adding fruit yet! (Thinking BIR Kashmiri and Malay which, IIRC, are centred on banana and pineapple? Or is it lychees? Either way, I'm all for getting one's five-a-day, but that's going to extremes!   )

[Peripatetic Phil]

I'd be interested in trying [Ghanna's chicken korma] George, if you could point my way to it-is it on the forum?

I can't tell you which post is best, but a site-wide search for "Ghanna" and "korma", in message bodies and date order, should lead to the answer.

[George]

Livo - I am pleased to see you have upgraded the bhuna from 'fair/OK' to 'good'. I wouldn't have been so rude if you'd written 'good' in the first place. All our tastes are different and I know I quite like black cardamons so I doubt if I reduced the quantity of those. But it was about 18 months ago, when I made that dish and I can't really remember what I did, except not adding ANY garam masala. The reason was that it already tasted like the buffet bhunas which I was trying to emulate and I guessed that any garam masala would probably spoil the flavour. In addition, I may have added additional whole spices at the start. You could perhaps look at the similar recipes you found to see which whole spices they use. I don't trust restaurant authors to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The author may have dumbed down the recipe a bit, compared to what he would make. Adding further spices may have addressed what he could have left out.

[George]

I'd be interested in trying this George, if you could point my way to it-is it on the forum?

See here: https://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=312.0

[livo]

An update on the Lamb Bhoona. Normally, in my experience anyway, a curry would improve after a rest in the fridge.  This dish is a rare exception.  It was better when first cooked. Tonight the flavour had intensified so much that I could only eat the smallest amount before it was just too much.  The black cardamom is dominant but the whole spicing is just far too strong (in my opinion).  It is probably the intensity caused by the 10 minute bhooning of the spices.  The lamb was completely lost. It has nice soft texture but any lamb flavour is completely overwhelmed.

I do think the recipe has potential but I will make some adjustments next time.

[livo]

The main changes I made to the lamb bhoona recipe was to add a fair amount of full cream yoghurt and not add any garam masala. This was because an earlier recipe I'd tried 10 years ago for a lamb curry used yoghurt and I thought it was worth trying. The yoghurt may have 'toned down' and smoothed out the spices, for all I know, because, as I said, my end result was really good, at least for my taste.

Thanks for adding this George. I don't think adding the Garam Masala in the end is unusual but I was never going to add the quantity suggested. I halved it and I think it could be halved again. I know some people don't like it at all. I agree that the yogurt would tone the whole lot down but I also think that the 10 minute bhooning of the spices is a long time.  I'll be definitely only using one Black Cardamom next time and reducing the bhooning stage to 5 minutes.

[Peripatetic Phil]

The bhuna sauce is back in stock at the moment, as is the vindaloo, and I am about to have another go at the bhuna, this time with the idea of converting bhuna lamb into a lamb biryani.  As the recipe on the jar is so d@mned hard to read, I transcribe it below for posterity.

• Dice 340gm of your chosen meat or vegetables
• Heat 15ml of oil in a saucepan (I used 30gm

[George]

I tried another jar of Aldi's Bhuna sauce again with lamb a couple of weeks ago and, once more, it produced a really tasty meal - exceptional for a sauce coming out of a jar.  Each time, I don't add all the sauce in one go but strech out the simmering time to 45 mins, adding about 1 heaped tbls sauce every few minutes.

Next, I tried lamb with Aldi's Jalfrezi sauce in exactly the same way, but it was nowhere near as tasty as the Bhuna sauce.