Mauritian butter bean and lamb curry with carrot salad recipe

Details

• Cuisine: Indian
• Recipe Type: Main
• Difficulty: Easy
• Preparation Time: 25 mins
• Cooking Time: 70 mins
• Serves: 6

Step-by-step

1. You first need to make your curry paste – you can do this earlier in the day or even the night before and keep it covered in the fridge to help you get ahead.
2. Dry fry the cumin, cloves and cardamom in a non-stick pan on a low-medium heat until they become aromatic – be sure they don’t burn. Remove from the pan and grind in a spice grinder to a powder. If you don’t have a spice grinder, that’s fine. Be sure to grind them quite finely in a pestle and mortar before continuing. Whether using the spice grinder or the pestle and mortar, remove the cardamom husks after.
3. In your pestle and mortar, grind the garlic, ginger, tumeric, chillies and curry leaves along with your ground spices. Adding some rock salt to the mortar will help with the grinding process, as well as season it. Once it’s quite smooth, add the curry powder and garam masala and mix well. Add a little water to the mix until you have a paste. Your curry paste is now complete.
4. After soaking your beans overnight, thoroughly rinse them in lots of cold water and put in a large pan. To prepare your meat, chop them into cubes and remove any gristle or fat they may have. Put the chunks in the same pot as the beans – there’s no need to brown them first.
5. The bits of bone in the legs that are left after cubing your meat is for adding flavour to the curry rather than eating. Although if you’re partial to bone marrow, then feel free to suck it out when the curry is done – yum.
6. Cover the beans and meat with cold water (a couple of cm above the contents) and bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer. Lots of scum will float to the surface – keep skimming this off every time you see it with a large metal spoon. Stir occasionally so nothing gets stuck to the bottom, and cook with the lid on until the beans are partially done but still too hard to eat. If the water gets low, top it up. You want to end up with the water only just covering the contents by the time this stage is complete – any more and your curry will be too watery. Remember it’s easier to add then take away.To start making the curry, fry your onion in some oil in a separate pan until brown – I use a wok at this stage as it’s non-stick and holds a large volume. Add your curry paste and cook for a few minutes on a low-medium heat – don’t let it burn. Add the can of chopped tomatoes and cook for another 5 minutes or so.
7. Once your curry paste and tomatoes are cooked, pour the whole contents of the beans and meat into the wok – water and all. Stir well. You then want to cook the beans and meat in this curry paste for the remainder of the time it takes for the beans to become nice and soft – probably 45-60mins, but keep checking. If the liquid gets low and the beans are still not cooked, add a little more to just cover them again.
8. You can decide on your curry consistency at this stage – if you do want it more saucy, then add water accordingly. I like my sauce quite thick so once the beans were cooked, I kept the lid off and let the sauce reduce down until I was happy with the consistency.
9. In the meantime, make your carrot salad. Grate your carrots, add chopped coriander, olive oil and lemon to taste. I love lemon, so I add quite a lot and find the fresh sharpness works very well with the packed flavour from the curry.
10. Once your beans are adequately soft and your sauce has reached your desired consistency, it’s ready to bowl up. Sprinkle with some fresh coriander and serve alongside the carrot salad and either some chapattis (my preference) or rice (good for mopping if you ended up with a more liquid sauce).