Every Sunday morning after watching Micky Mouse and Spiderman, I rode my bike to our local market. I haggled with the ladies selling produce under towering tamarind trees to buy onions and tomatoes and cilantro and green chillies. I then walked my bike to the butcher, Bhagwan, and ordered two kilos of goat meat, before heading back home, riding furiously to be in time for the next episode of Sherlock Holmes.
Later in the morning my uncle used to drop by and usually one or two of my dad’s close friends and together they had raucous, animated discussions on politics and religion and memories of their youth. But really what they were doing was waiting for my mom’s goat curry to be ready. Our entire apartment was like four hundred square feet but even with all these people joining us for lunch, I didn’t remember it being uncomfortable or crowded.
The meal itself wasn’t spectacular. The goat curry was the star, accompanied by white rice, kachoomar (a pico de gallo type salad), fried paapad, achaar and depending on the season, slices of mangoes or spiced and diced guava. It isn’t a meal you’ll find in any Indian restaurant, but it was wholesome and flavorful, and really that’s nothing you’ll find in a restaurant either.
So today being a Sunday, with my mom watching over my shoulder I tried to recreate the meal. It’s really quite simple and I thought I’d share the recipe. I pressure cooked the meat with ginger garlic paste and turmeric powder for about twenty minutes. Ethical questions aside, baby goat meat is tender and juicy and cooks easily, so that’s what I would recommend. While the meat was cooking, I fried some chunks of potatoes in oil, browning each side to a nice golden color. After the potatoes were done, I tempered the oil with cinnamon and cardamom and then added fried onions, tomatoes, chillies, yogurt along with coriander powder and garam masala and created a curry sauce. Once this let out an aroma, I dumped in the pressure cooked meat and stirred it with the sauce for a few minutes. Then lowering the flame, I let it simmer for about half and hour and that was it. Goat curry done.
I miss my dad, and my uncle, Muhammad chacha who exchanged comics with me every weekend, and my dad’s friend Hamdulay uncle who had fascinating stories about a place called Castle Rock. I miss their discussions, many of them far more relevant today than they were thirty years ago. I miss the stories of their youth as I struggle to remember my own. I miss those Sunday lunches.
The goat curry was quite awesome, by the way.