I’m Told It’s Called Lamb Keema Curry

My family gave me James May’s cookbook, Oh Cook! 60 Easy Recipes That Any Idiot Can Make, for Father’s Day.

“Hey!” you might be saying to yourself as you read this. “I know James May. He’s that English guy from Top Gear back when it was cool and producers got punched. He’s the one who wears those Jackson Pollock shirts and whose hair won’t let him be his age.” And you’d be right.

I’m a cookbook reader, by which I mean when I get a new cookbook, not always but usually, I start at the beginning and read all the non-instructional text. I do read the text of recipes before I eventually make them, but I like the stories and bits of history and trivia that pepper the pages enough to put up with the naturally sourced/sustainable/organic sanctimony (Jamie Oliver thinks he’s Food Jesus.) I’ve pored over Escoffier, Marcella Hazan (Her Name Be Praised), and again and again the books of M.F.K. Fisher. I don’t write this lightly:

Under the heading “A Note on Weights and Measures,” James May has written the most important paragraph ever to grace the pages of a cookbook.

Without further preamble:

Cooking is not engineering. The volume of milk in cheese sauce is not critical in the way that the diameter of a piston is, or the mass of a blade in a jet engine, not least because tiny variations in that are compounded by the huge rotational speeds found in gas turbines.

M.F.K. Fisher has written in the same vein, and I’d gladly share her wisdom if someone could remind me which of the thousand or so pages of hers I have on my shelf contains the relevant bits because I can’t find the damned thing. But Fisher, with memories of poor girls who “couldn’t boil water” (and yes, I did look for the passages I wanted in “How to Boil Water”) and indulgent toast and jam breakfasts, wrote for those of us already inclined to cooking and who knew that two cloves meant four. May brings cooking to Everyman the way he did cars, Italy, old toys, bathroom plants, and Japan.

Cookbooks used to be sensible. A recipe read “Add stock and rosemary and reduce to desired consistency.” It wasn’t until Fannie Farmer release her Fannie Farmer 1896 Cook Book, The Boston Cooking School that baking measurements were imposed on cooking and a hostage publishing industry complied to a public thinking “This is it!” and the days of people turning noses up at their mock turtle soup (pg. 116) would end.

There is nothing intrinsic about the relationship between a cup and a tablespoon. It should beggar belief that the same units happen to work across the ingredient landscape, from tomato sauce to salad dressing, everything fits. Then they insult your intelligence with “scant” and “heaping” and “handful” – I once worked with a chef who described everything as a “grip” as in a “grip of onion” in a soup or a “grip of shrimp” in a pasta – as an acknowledgement on the sly that these measurements, far from exact, are approximations made assuming you have a standard kitchen retinue.

Years ago I wrote how foolish it was that, “you should ignore the fact that the author neither had any idea how strong your stock is or how much salt you like. A cup is somehow tied to a teaspoon and also a tablespoon as a perfect relationship. That almost works in baking. Not remotely in cooking.” and “The only measurement that counts is you and your taste buds. If you doubt yourself, tread lightly. Add a pinch. Taste. Add more if needed.”

May puts it more succinctly. I’m thankful to him.

In honor of May’s contributions to culinary chaos I’m giving my version of a recipe from my Father’s Day gift. Ingredient quantities are included but know that I very rarely measure anything and when trying to convey how much X to add I’m approximating that my palm probably holds 2 tbsps. and that amount of olive oil I just used looks like it might have half filled my palm. Then I taste and add more if I need to. You’ll be fine.

I’d never come across the word “Keema” before, but Google tells me it means “A traditional dish of the Indian subcontinent, typically minced – lamb curry with peas or potatoes and spices, sometimes used as a filling in samosas or naan,” and that fits, so I’ll carry on even though I forgot about the peas.

Lamb Keema Curry

• 1 lb. ground lamb
• ½ yellow onion, diced
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 adult proximal phalanx sized piece of ginger, minced
• 1 jalapeno, deseeded or not, diced
• 2 tbsps. curry powder, hot or medium to taste
• 2 large tomatoes, diced
• 5 oz. plain yogurt
• small handful cilantro, chopped
• mint leaves, chopped as garnish
• salt to taste
• olive oil

In case you are wondering, the proximal phalanx is the largest of the three bones making up the length of your finger. It looks like this when translated to ginger (presented without reference to scale):

I was thinking of the pointer finger if that helps.

Start with a few glugs of olive oil in a skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat and add the onions. Sauté until translucent. You don’t want it to brown so add a pinch of salt to draw out the water in the onion if needed.

Add the jalapeno and ginger and cook until the jalapeno begins to dull. I recommend tasting the jalapeno first. I had a huge one that carried about as much heat as a typical orange. Jalapenos are absurdly inconsistent. I left the seeds in to get some spiciness out of the thing. Adjust if you need to and don’t feel bad if you add another jalapeno, reduce to half of one, or augment with red pepper flakes.

Next add the lamb with a generous pinch of salt. When browned, stir in the curry powder. If you are taking pictures of the process and get sidetracked or for other reasons forget to take a shot of the meat browning, don’t worry. There’s always time to take a picture when the meat is browned but before you’ve stirred in the tomatoes.

Which brings us to the next step.

Toss the tomatoes, seeds, skins, juice, and all to the pan and stir. Bring the liquid to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer.

Stir in the yogurt and simmer for around 15 minutes, stirring every few minutes. If needed, add a bit of water to keep from drying out. I wrote “I had water at hand in case the skillet dried out,” but backspaced quickly because I could only think of a grip of rare occasions where I’d be in a kitchen without water at hand.

If you remembered peas, 10 minutes after the yogurt would be a good time to throw them in, frozen is fine.

Add cilantro, stir in, and continue simmering for five more minutes.

All done. Correct for salt and serve.

I got rectangular blue plates for Father’s Day too.

We had it with rice and the listed mint garnish but piled high on naan would be nice. Wrapped in lettuce or cabbage would be heretical to the British interpretation of the Indian dish – at least I think so – but good.

This dish reminded me of something we used to have for dinner when I was a kid. The flavors are different, but we used to have ground meat over rice a lot.

When I was born, dad was three or so weeks into law school and we lived in married student housing with an annual stipend of, I was told, three and a half thousand dollars, give or take. I don’t know if that was a grant from the school or the G.I. Bill or what, but it meant economizing. It was 1973 so a dollar was worth a bit more then than now and a place to live was taken care of, but still. Mom and a neighbor would take weekly trips to the grocery store together to save gas.

My parents decided they wanted beef stroganoff, but there was no way they could afford it. Mom improvised with ground beef in a pan, salt, pepper, sour cream, lemon juice, and curly parsley (flat-leaf wasn’t invented until late-Reagan.) They liked it so much it stayed on rotation long after student austerity. We’d have “Hamburger and Sour Cream” at least once a month. I haven’t had that in years.

So that’s two recipes. Kinda. I haven’t finished reading May’s book yet. Who knows what other magnificent paragraphs await. Enjoy.