Wow, it's definitely been two years since I wrote anything here. Prof life is busy, y'all. Quick update: Still teaching at Swarthmore, married Matt, got an InstantPot for a wedding present. And somewhere in there we watched a lot of Great British Bake-Off on tv and just loved Nadiya, who (spoiler alert!) won a season or two ago. So I recently followed her on Twitter, where she's generally a ray of sunshine, and found out she has some cookbooks and bought one. And then thus week made the lamb bhuna, because of course that's the first thing I go for.
The bhuna was pretty great. Even though I didn't quite follow the recipe. First of all, it comes with a recipe for garlic naan, but instead of 200 grams (1 1/3 cups) of flour (yes, it's ll in grams and weight measurements. Brits.) I somehow misread and put 800 grams (5 1/3 cups) in the food processor, and didn't notice til I'd mixed in the other dry ingredients so it was too late to turn back, and so I quadrupled everything else too and we ate a LOT of naan. Which really isn't a bad thing. (NB: My kindle version of the book says 'add the water' in the naan recipe but doesn't ever say how much. If you believe the BBC version, it's 100ml - just under half cup, or 7 tablespoons - for a normal 200g-of-flour batch. Also: 1 cup self-rising flour = 1 cup all-purpose + 1.5 tsp baking powder + 1/4 tsp salt, says King Arthur.)
Then also the recipe called for 800 grams (1 3/4 lbs) lamb, and I only bought just under a pound, and because the recipe already only uses half the curry paste it makes and I didn't want to divide by four, and also yay leftovers, I made up the difference with eggplants. And left out the bell peppers b/c eew. And made it in the InstantPot instead of on the stovetop, because that thing is magic for getting tender falling-apart meat bits. (As Chekhov said, introduce an InstantPot in the first paragraph, you have to use it in the third.) So what follows here is almost but not really the real thing, converted into cups and pounds for us Yankees, and really quite tasty. Cheers.
InstantPot Lamb-Eggplant Bhuna àla Nadiya
~1 lb lamb cubes
2 medium-small eggplants
7 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp fresh ginger
2 small onions
2 hot peppers or to taste
5+ cloves of garlic
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp turmeric
1.5 tsp curry powder, whatever that means to you
1.5 tsp garam masala
chopped cilantro
1. Roughly chop the onions, garlic, chilis, and ginger. Use a small food processor or, even better, an immersion blender in a tall measuring cup to whiz them into a smooth paste together with the oil, salt, spices, and 1/3 cup of water.
2. Chop the lamb into bite-sized cubes if it isn't already. Same with the eggplants.
3. Put the curry paste in the InstantPot, turn it on to the Saute function, and cook 5-10 minutes, until it starts to separate. Stir a lot - the saute setting is blazing hot and burnt curry paste is no good (though a little sticking & browning is just fine).
4. Add the lamb to the pot and brown the sides for another ~5 min. Add the eggplant and stir to coat with curry goo. Add 2/3 cup more water, put on the lid, and set to pressure cook for 30 min. This is a good moment to cook the naans (see BBC link above) and/or put on some basmati rice.
5. When the InstantPot's finished doing its thing, let it rest for another few minutes then vent the steam. take the top back off, set it back to Saute, and cook another 5-10 mins, stirring, til the sauce reduces. The eggplant will suddenly collapse into mush, which is fine. Taste for salt, serve with chopped cilantro.
