150/18 – Lamb Raan:
I am a big fan of Dan Toombs (The Curry Guy) and have been cooking recipes from his website for a number of years now. Last year Dan released his first printed book “The Curry Guy” which had some great recipes in to recreate typical British Indian Restaurant dishes. Dan has now followed that book up with “The Curry Guy – Easy” which follows a similar theme but with dishes that are a bit easier to prepare and cook. Dan was kind enough to send me a copy of the new book. We really enjoyed reading through the book and have picked out loads of recipes to cook indoors and outdoors. Second cook from the book was Lamb Raan which is one of my favourite dishes to have at Dishoom.
This recipe is from The Curry Guy Easy cook book – You can buy the book by clicking the link below:
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THE MEAT:
The best quality and best tasting lamb I have eaten is from Briggs Shetland Lamb. The lambs spend their days on a rough pasture croft on the island of Shetland. The breed is naturally smaller with a finished lamb weighing 8kg to 14kg compared to other breeds at 17kg to 22kg. Richard compares his lambs to Oranges and Tangerines, the smaller ones are juicier!
The hogget was 18 months old and cost me £100 fully butchered and delivered. If you live in Scotland Richard might be able to deliver it in person on his way to the restaurants in Glasgow and Edinburgh. If you live further away you can order through Fresh Food Express who will courier the meat to you.
In the box:
- 2 leg joints which include the chump
- 2 racks of rib chops (Not French trimmed)
- 2 racks of loin chops
- 2 shoulder joints
- Neck
- and pieces of flank
The cut selected for this cook was a hogget leg.
The hogget leg was pierced all over and thinly sliced garlic was placed into the slivers. Next I made a marinade from garlic, ginger, fried onions, chilli powder, tandoori masala and yoghurt.
The Chilli Powder and Tandoori Masala came from some of the ingredients Steenbergs sent me recently:
I have been really impressed with the quality of the ingredients I have used so far, they are definitely improving the quality of my dishes. Have a look at this cook for more details:
On the left is the chilli powder from my cupboard which I bought in a Chinese supermarket and on the right is the Steenbergs Chilli Powder. There is an obvious colour difference and it’s not easy to tell if that’s a natural shade of red on the supermarket chilli powder or if something has been added. Steenbergs say their chilli powder is ground and blended to a consistent heat of 50,000 Scoville units which is hot enough for most but you can increase/reduce quantities as required. They also mention some Mexican style chilli powders are mixed with cumin and other herbs.
Sniffing both the supermarket chilli powder smells a bit like paper/cardboard, not sure if its old or if it’s always been like that! The Steenbergs chilli powder smelt fresh and mild. £2.60 for 50g.
A new one for me to try Tandoori Masala: Paprika, fenugreek, cumin, coriander, black pepper, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, chilli, green cardamom, caraway seed and peppermint – all organic. It smelt fantastic and I can see me using this on some dishes on it’s own in future. The blend is hotter than supermarket mixes and has no artificial colourings added. £2.65 for 50g.
I laid out some cling film and placed the hogget on top before rubbing the marinade all over the meat and wrapping it up tightly. This went into the fridge for two days.
After two days in the fridge it was time to prepare for the cook. I needed some cinnamon and luckily I had some from Steenbergs. The picture below shows Cassia bark at the top and the Steenbergs Cinnamon at the bottom. Cassia is much cheaper than cinnamon which is why a lot of ground cinammon is actually cassia. My cassia was from the Chinese supermarket. Cinammon tastes sweeter than cassia which can be more bitter. Having seen cinnamon being cut and rolled in India and Sri Lanka I can understand why it’s more expensive as it’s an incredibly resource intensive operation! Anyway, the Steenbergs cinnamon smelt fantastic, sweet and like Christmas! £3.10 for 52g.
Cinnamon into the tray with bay leaves and chopped red onions with the hogget on top and sprinkled with black pepper. The marinade had been scraped off the hogget and kept in a bowl to make a sauce later.
Time to Cook:
The Kamado Joe Big Joe had been fired up to 180c with a full basket of Oxford Charcoal Marabu. I had lit this in two places with flamers, vents wide open and left it for half an hour to heat up.
Whilst it was warming up I dropped a chunk of plum in to provide a bit of smoke and put the hogget in uncovered to catch a bit of the smoke before wrapping it in foil once the KJ hit 180c.
The Meater probe was in and set to 68c. The recipe says to cook for 2.5 hours until the meat is falling off the bone. I haven’t really achieved that with leg before, easier with shoulder but leg usually just overcooks plus these Shetland legs are smaller than standard lamb legs so I played it safe and aimed for 68c so I could take a view. At 68c I took it off, nicely pink inside but not falling off the bone, also not black like in the picture.
I deglazed the pan with lamb stock, strained the pan and combined the juice with the marinade saved earlier to make a sauce. Whilst doing this I had opened the vents of the KJ right up to increase the heat of the oven.
The hogget leg was sprinkled with Chaat masala, there is a recipe in the book but I took the easy way out and used a jar from Steenbergs: Salt, cumin, fennel, caraway seed, cinnamon, black pepper, cardamom, clove and chilli – £2.60 for 60g This was another jar that looked and smelt fantastic! I can see this working well on Bombay potatoes.
The hogget went back on for about 10/15 minutes per side and it darkened right up. 
The meat wasn’t going to pull so I sliced it, what a great colour and it was nice and juicy.
To be served with the sauce:
Time to Eat:
I sneaked a few bits of meat, juicy and very tasty with a nice kick of spice!
SUMMARY:
This was a very tasty dish with a good range of flavours and a nice kick of heat from the spices. It had quite a different flavour profile to the Dishoom one but you might expect different recipes to have different tastes. I was wondering about using a shoulder rather than a leg, keeping some of the marinade on then smoking it low and slow so it formed a bark but pulled at the end. I might try this when my next lamb arrives!
| Cook Difficulty: | 3/5 |
| Cook Duration: | Medium: 3/5 |
| Cook Equipment: | Kamado Joe |
| Cook Method: | Indirect |
| Charcoal: | Oxford Charcoal Marabu |
| Smoking Wood: | Plum |
| Cook temperature: | 180C then 300C |
| Cook time: | 1h10 then 30 minutes |
| Internal temperature: | 68C Thermapen then up to 80C |
| Notes: | 1: Try again with a shoulder rather than a leg 2: Keep some marinade on to form a bark. 3: Cook it low and slow then pull it. |
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