The Indian subcontinent · Volume 15, The Trami, the Boti and a Kitchen Split Three Ways
Khatta meat
Jammu, Dogra tradition
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 2 hours
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Jammu's sour mutton curry, distinct from a similarly named Kashmiri dish, khatta gosht, that this chapter has not found a rigorous side by side comparison of; the two should not be treated as the same dish under different names.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 2 hours.
Ingredients
- 1 kg mutton, cut into pieces
- for browning mustard oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 tbsp ground anardana (dried pomegranate seed)
- 1 tbsp amchur (dried mango powder)
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- to taste salt
- enough to cover water, to cover
- 1 small piece of charcoal; 1 tsp mustard oil charcoal and mustard oil, for dhuni (optional)
Method
- Brown the mutton in mustard oil with the chopped onion.
- Add the ground anardana, amchur, turmeric, ground coriander and salt.
- Cover with water and simmer for around an hour and a half until the meat is tender and the sauce has reduced and taken on a genuine sourness from the anardana and amchur rather than any fresh acid.
- To finish with dhuni, set a small piece of burning charcoal in a heatproof cup nestled into the finished dish, pour a teaspoon of hot mustard oil over it to raise smoke, and cover the whole pan tightly for 2 to 3 minutes before removing the cup and serving.
Notes
Distinct from a similarly named Kashmiri dish, khatta gosht; this chapter has not found a rigorous side-by-side comparison of the two, and they should not be treated as the same dish under different names.
What a modern chef changes
An anardana reduction, a sous vide braise and a smoking gun for the dhuni
Builds on rung 5
Method
- Reduce anardana to a syrup. Simmer extra pomegranate seed down in advance to a concentrated syrup, stirred through the finished dish for a deeper, more controlled sourness than the ground seed alone gives.
- Cook the meat sous vide. Bring it to full tenderness at a controlled low temperature, then finish the sauce separately, rather than braising the two together for the full time.
- Use a smoking gun for the dhuni. Run it briefly under a cloche over the finished dish, a more controllable, repeatable version of the same smoke infusion.
- Garnish with dehydrated mango. Dust mango slice with amchur and dehydrate it as a garnish, echoing the dish's own souring agent in a second, visible form.