Lamb in curry sauce with flavoured couscous
This year, we often have lamb on our menu. In previous years, it was a bit complicated for me to find good lamb to make at home. Then I dared myself to explore where and how to get a good piece of lamb.
Once you take courage for one thing, then the others follow…and that’s how you create a courageous recipe lamb in curry sauce with couscous, which looks very complicated in the picture, but it’s actually really simple and does not require special skills.
components
- MEAT AND COUSCOUS:
- 1kg lamb chops
- 250gr couscous
- 150-200gr soup or broth
- 1/4 teaspoons of ground hot pepper
- 1/5 teaspoons of turmeric
- a bit of cinnamon, a bit of rosemary
- 1/4 teaspoons of ground coriander
- 1/4 teaspoons of ground cumin
- SAUCE AND GELLY:
- 1,5l carrot juice
- 1/4 teaspoons of lemon grass
- 1 teaspoons of fresh ginger
- 1/2 teaspoons of ground coriander
- 1 teaspoon of red curry paste (not hot)
- gelatin leaves and agar-agar
- GENERAL INGREDIENTS:
- butter
- olive oil
- micro herbs and edible flowers to taste
- salt, pepper
Instruction
- Clean the fat off the lamb chops. Coat with the mixture of olive oil, rosemary, salt and pepper and leave it be for 1 hour at room temperature.
- Pour carrot juice in separate pot. Add lemon grass, fresh ginger, ground coriander, curry paste. If the paste is hot, adjust the quantity to your taste. Cook for 30 minutes. Prepare agar agar aside and soak the gelatin leaves in cold water. Prepare gelatin and agar agar according to the instructions on the packaging, but in 50%-50% relation, save the fact that in the jelly mixture, you need to put them in separately. First put in agar agar and cook together with the mixture, and then off the stove put in gelatin leaves and mix well without additional heating.
- After 30 minutes of cooking, strain the seasoned carrot juice and separate 0,5l in which you will put agar-agar and gelatin according to the instructions from the previous step.
- Pour the mixture in which you put agar-agar and gelatin in a baking tray covered with transparent foil 3mm high. Quickly put micro herbs and edible flowers on top so that it can become part of the jelly. Leave everything to thicken.
- The remaining carrot juice reduce to the desired thickness for the sauce. Strain and leave aside to pour over couscous and meat.
- Now it's time for meat. Bake in a pan at medium temperature until the meat becomes pink inside. The approximate temperature you need to get is 60-65°C and not higher than that. At the end, add 2-3 butter cubes, melt them in the pan and pour over meat while baking.
- Mix couscous with dry spices and pour hot soup over it. Leave aside so that couscous soaks in the soup entirely (you can also use stock cube, melted in water).
- We prepared everything that needed to be done, and now it's left to serve the dish.
- Put couscous in a smaller mold (circle or square), pour couscous and press it on each side, then remove the mold and cut the gelatin to the size of the mold and put it on couscous.
- Put the lamb chop and pour the flavoured and reduces carrot juice sauce over everything.
- Enjoy!
As one would say, it’s fit for all levels of culinary knowledge.
For lamb in curry sauce the most important thing is
Meat
Lamb, or better yet lamb chops from which you take fat and the little meat you find on them. Never throw away the meat, but rather make a gravy sauce with it, which you can later pour over the lamb chop. I know, there is not much but it’s just enough to give flavour to the meat.
This time, I took off only half, but if you find it too complicated, just take everything off the ribs.
You need a bit of butter, rosemary, salt and pepper. While we’re at rosemary, do not put too much of it and „kill“ the meat with it. You always keep in mind that what you’re eating is meat, and not rosemary. So, 3-4 needles of rosemary per chop is just enough.
Couscous
Make couscous according to the instructions on the packaging. You can buy the one already seasoned, or the regular one and then season it to your taste. Also, you can buy the already made seasoning for couscous, in a small jar in almost every good supermarket or health food store.
If you want to make your own seasoning mixture, here’s an option:
Ground sweet pepper
Ground coriander, cumin… cinnamon is great, too, something hot like fresh or ground pepper, turmeric
You can put it all together or choose your favourites.
The couscous is quick and easy to prepare…you need to put it in a bowl and pour with hot water. Better option is always to pour hot SOUP, broth etc. instead.
What I made from scratch is jelly on top.
Jelly and/or sauce
For this part you will need carrot juice. It’s best to make it yourself with fresh carrot, but you can also use the carrot juice from the store.
Then, curry paste, coriander, ginger and lemon grass. You can find it all in a spice up shop.
You make a jelly from all of that, you need gelatin leaves and agar-agar.
If you only put gelatin leaves (following the instructions on the bag), the jelly part will be thicker. It’s better to combine half/half for a more elastic option. The more elastic option will be a better fit for couscous.
Sauce and gelatin are the same mixture with a different texture.
If you don’t like the jelly on your plate, you can always reduce the seasoned carrot juice to a desired thickness. Then, you can strain it to remove the unnecessary grainy leftovers and then you can use it as sauce.
Decoration
Urban farmers’ edible flowers, micro herbs, corn, coriander…
Now let’s move onto the complete lamb in curry sauce recipe.
If you like stew with lamb then you must try this tajine
For great recipes with couscous click here
