Mamta's Kitchen - A Family Cookbook





Keema

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On 12/01/2008 09:01pm, Steve S wrote:

Hi Mamta

Congratulations on your amazing website - I only discovered it recently, and it has been so useful, both for the recipes and for the hints and tips in the forum.

Although I have been cooking Indian food for many years, one dish I have never been able to replicate properly is a style of keema that I used to eat when I lived in Leeds back in the late 1970s - it was widely available in cheap restaurants in the Leeds/Bradford area at that time (it may still be for all I know - I moved back down south and you certainly can't get anything like it down here).

I have tried loads of keema recipes since then, but nothing has come close, either in texture or flavour. It was clearly based on lamb/mutton mince, but what was so different was the incredibly soft texture of the meat, which always came with a deep layer of dark orange oil on top (not healthy, but incredibly tasty!).

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how this style of keema can be made?

Steve S

On 13/01/2008 03:01pm, Askcy wrote:

As Keema recipes can differ wildly and we can't be sure of the taste, it would be hard to just guess what it might have been like...

but !

If you were eating them at takeaways/cheap restaurants I'm guessing they didn't pay several chefs to cook to order so they probably made big batches and kept it in the fridge (or maybe even the freezer) for most of the week.

So they might have used mutton, which to me has a much better flavour than lamb (you can't beat Mutton and spinach curry!) and kept it cooking on a simmer while the shop was open. They might then let it cool and reheat it again the next night which would obviously make it very tender. The oil covering it in the pan helps to seal it and stop it going off (well used technique in many countries where fridges aren't as available).

The other possible would be they just create a couple of basic sauce mixes and depending on what you order, depends on what else they add. Be it some steamed chicken, gently boiled lamb, extra onions, more chilli etc etc...

Thats my first thoughts on it.

Steve

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