Mutton Kaliya

Posted by anuj Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:25:00 GMT

This is a one of my all time favourite and also one of the most famous preparation of avadhi cuisine. I first saw it being cooked by on a TV show about 15-16 years ago, in a traditional avadhi way; which involves sealing ingredients in large pot (handi), placed over slow fire and cooked for prolonged period of time. It a pretty elaborate recipe and, they say that your finger tips should be yellow after eating kaliya. The yellowness comes from turmeric, which is a main flavour in this recipe.

Mind you, my recipe involves a lot of improvisations and my own touches as after such a long time, I vaguely remember the actual recipe :)

Lets get on with the recipe then …

Ingredients

  • 1 kg Mutton (Goat meat, get shoulder if you can)
  • 4 big onions
  • 2 Bay leaves
  • 1 Tbsp Methi dana (Fenugreek seeds)
  • 4 dried red chillies
  • 2 black cardamoms
  • 1 tsp Jeera
  • 3-4 cloves
  • 4 tsp Turmeric powder ( Oh yeah !)
  • 4-5 garlic pods (big ones)
  • Thumbsize Ginger
  • 1/2 cup Mustard Oil or Ghee
  • 1 1/2 cups of thick yoghurt

Lets go….

Firstly, goes without saying; please use a vessel with a heavy bottom. Pour in the oil and smoke the mustard oil, this takes out the raw pungency of mustard oil and also makes it less viscous. Now reduce the heat as we don’t want to burn our spices.

Add the spices (bay leaves , methi dana, red chillies, black cardamoms, jeera, cloves) and let the spices infuse into the oil. When the bay leaves turn brown, add the finely chopped onions, crushed garlic and ginger. Turn the heat to medium and when onion turns golden brown and add turmeric. Keep stirring it for a minute and then add mutton.

Let the mutton fry for about 5-10 minutes and keep stirring it every now and then. Now add the yoghurt. Mix it well and make sure you turn the heat to low after adding in yoghurt. Now cover the vessel with a heavy lid and let it simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. If you wanna get real good results, dum it.

DUM is the process of sealing in the contents and cooking on slow flame for long period. Traditionally and the way I prefer it, you make some dough and line the vessel with it. Then you place a lid on top and press it hard to seal the vessel with dough lining. This way the pressure inside cooks the ingredients much better, moreover, its like an automatic timer which tell you when cooking is over. Well, the dough lining cooks just like the ingredients, looses the bonding power, releases the lid and you see steam gushing out. That is equivalent of your oven timer beep :)

Back to the recipe, remove the lid, gently stir and test a piece of meat. The meat should be quite tender. But we are going for a tenderness of heaven, add a cup of water and put the lid back on for another half an hour. Kaliya is done!

There is nothing better than having it with Zafarani pulao or just plain roti.

you can also try another twist , which I happened to come across some time ago.