For a dinner party, I often serve a roast leg of lamb, studded with garlic cloves and slathered in mustard French-style. I make sure the meat when cooked is always rosy—in fact, saignant at the bone—and therefore good to use in any number of dishes that ordinarily call for raw lamb. And I always find myself with plenty of leftovers—one forgets how hefty a leg of lamb is these days. I wrote about some of my experiments with leftover lamb in my book The Tenth Muse in a section called “The Nine Lives of a Leg of Lamb.” So, if you are confronted with this happy dilemma of too much lamb, you’ll find nine recipes there, which can be cut down to serve one. I don’t want to repeat them here, but I have since experimented with this lamb curry for one, which I find delicious.
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Heat the oil in a small pan, and sauté the onion, pepper, and garlic gently for about 8 minutes, until softened. Add the lamb chunks, fennel seeds, and curry powder. Salt lightly, squeeze several drops of lemon juice over, and pour on the braising liquid. Cover, and cook at a lively simmer for 10 minutes, checking to make sure your liquid isn’t reducing too rapidly; if it is, add more braising liquid or water. If you are using the coconut and the apple slices, toss them into the pan for the last 5 minutes of cooking. Taste and correct seasoning, adding more salt and lemon juice as you see fit. The sauce should now be thick and coating the meat. Serve with rice or an Indian bread, and a Cucumber Raita (page 163).
Variation
Step 2
If you haven’t got unsweetened coconut on hand or really tart apples, use instead a small handful of raisins, in which case you may want to increase the lemon juice.
