Lamb Stew - The Indian Enigma

As you can imagine, by starting an endeavor like this, my wife and I love to cook.  It started with the fact that we love to eat food.  And as our relationship evolved, we got more and more compelled to try to make the very food we loved to eat at restaurants.  One category of food that became an absolute necessity (for me) to learn how to cook was Chinese Food.  Great Chinese restaurants, for whatever reason, are a dying breed in Chicago (in our humble opinion).  And prior to the loss of some great Chinese landmarks in Chicago (i.e. China Lite, Shang Hai Minnie's), I grew rather addicted to the likes of Lemon Chicken, Moo Goo Gai Pan and Mongolian Beef.

We got married in 2009, and had the good fortune of having a treasure chest's worth of gift cards to Crate & Barrel.  While there, seeking to spend said fortune, I stumbled across Quick & Easy Chinese, a cookbook that became my favorite for the next year or so.  I made over half the recipes, many of which are now staples in our dinner rotation.  Because of the success, we branched into other ethnicities, and bought the comparable versions for Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Indian.  And across the board, we have had everywhere from modest to resounding success.  Except for one, Indian.  For whatever reason, there is always something not quite right.  Maybe it's the quality of the spices, the duration of time spent on each phase, etc.  Never far off, but never quite right.  So, in a way, I am in the midst of two quests as we speak.  First, the quest to cook all the meat in Paulina's display case, and two, to nail one of these Indian recipes.

The recipe on deck was Lamb Vindaloo, and called for 1.25 lbs of cubed Lamb Shoulder meat, which upon asking at Paulina, I learned that the Lamb Stew meat was in fact Lamb Shoulder.  Check.  But here is where my intermediate cooking skills (note: not expert) left me high and dry.  If you think about stew, you think "slow cooking".  So, stew meat is usually heavily marbled, to allow it to melt into the stew and add flavor.  My recipe was not a "slow cooked" recipe, just a 70 minute simmer.  You can probably predict the error of my ways.

Cumin, turmeric, mustard, red wine vinegar along with onions and garlic made for an extremely aromatic kitchen.  In went the lamb and the 70 minute simmer.  The result was "ok", certainly not bad and certainly not great.  The reason?  I didn't trim the fat.  Across the board, when we took a bite of lean Lamb Vindaloo with the aromatic spices and the basmati rice, it was delicious.  But the cubed stew meat truly required a much longer slow cooking experience.  Had I trimmed the meat, and only used lean lamb stew meat for this recipe, the result would have been undoubtedly delicious.  But the way I prepped it, I left us with too much tough in a dish that craved tender.

I now stand on the precipice of Indian food success.  I know what I need to do next time to nail it.  But when will I get the chance?  I have 52 more recipes to cook and 11 months to do them.  The Indian Enigma may need to wait a bit longer.

5 down, 52 to go!