Ground Lamb with Peas (Keema Matar)
Serves 4–6
I cannot imagine our picnics or train rides in India without thisdish. For my grandchildren, growing up in America, it is anall-time favorite. Sometimes we eat it with pooris, the deep-friedpuffed breads, as we did so often in India, and sometimes withrice. When cooking for the children, I leave out all the chilies,whether the powdered red kind or the fresh green variety. Myparents did the same for us when we were growing up.
I use low-fat yogurt, but you may use whole-milk yogurt if youprefer.
1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
One 2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated to a pulp
3 good-sized cloves garlic, peeled and crushed to a pulp
2 pounds ground lamb
4 tablespoons peanut or olive oil
2 sticks cinnamon, about 2 inches each in length
4 whole cardamom pods
2 bay leaves
1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 cup puréed tomatoes (also labeled strained tomatoes orpassata)
1 1/2 cups fresh (or frozen and defrosted) peas
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro
1–2 finely chopped fresh bird"s eye or cayenne-type greenchiles
1 teaspoon garam masala (see recipe below)
Put the yogurt in a bowl and whisk lightly until smooth andcreamy. Add the turmeric, cayenne, cumin, coriander, salt, ginger,and garlic. Mix until well blended.
Put the lamb into a large bowl. Pour the yogurt mixture over thetop and mix (I use my hands) until thoroughly blended. There shouldnot be any pools of yogurt left.
Pour the oil into a large (preferably nonstick) sauté pan and setover medium-high heat. When it is hot, put in the cinnamon,cardamom, and bay leaves. Stir once or twice, and then add theonion. Stir and fry about 5 minutes, or until the onion pieces arereddish brown.
Add all the meat. Stir and cook, breaking up the meat until nolumps and no pinkness are left, about 5 minutes.
Add the tomato purée and stir it in. Bring to a simmer. Cover,turn the heat to medium-low, and cook for 30 minutes, stirringevery 6–7 minutes and making sure there is enough liquid so thelamb does not stick to the bottom. Uncover. Most of the liquidshould have evaporated by this time. Stir and fry the meat for thenext 5 minutes, removing and discarding the cinnamon sticks,cardamom pods, and bay leaves. After 5 minutes, spoon out as muchof the fat as you can and discard it. Now put in the peas,cilantro, green chilies (if desired), garam masala, and 6tablespoons water. Mix, cover and cook on low heat another 6–7minutes, or until tender.
Garam Masala
Makes about 3 tablespoons
An aromatic spice mixture made with the more expensive "warming"spices, this is generally, though not always, used towards the endof a cooking period to add a rich but still delicate whiff ofelegance. It may be bought, already prepared, in spice stores, butgenerally has too many filler spices such as cumin and corianderand not enough of the more expensive cardamom and cinnamon. Indiangrocers sell cardamom seeds already removed from their pods.Nutmegs are soft and may be broken by tapping with a hammer. Hereis a family recipe.
1 tablespoon cardamom seeds
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 teaspoon whole black cumin seeds
1 teaspoon whole cloves
About 2/3 of a nutmeg
One 2-inch stick of cinnnamon, broken up into small pieces
Put all the spices into the container of a spice grinder or cleancoffee grinder and grind as finely as possible. Store in a tightlylidded jar, away from sunlight. It will keep for severalmonths.
ONE
The orchard site had housed our family homestead only since theearly decades of the twentieth century. My family actually camefrom the walled city, often called Old Delhi, just to the south,built by the Moghul Emperor Shah Jahan in the seventeenth century.My family referred to it simply as Shahar, or the City.
There are many Delhis, as we were to study in school, all builteither alongside each other or wholly or partly on top of eachother, often reusing building materials knocked down in bloodyefforts at domination. Our own original family home was inChailpuri, in the narrow lanes of the Old City. It had as itscarefully chosen foundation sturdy stones “borrowed” from the wallsof Ferozshah Kotla, the fourteenth-century fortress and palace of afourteenth- century emperor in a fourteenth-century Delhi.
Starting with the ancient Vedic city of Indraprastha, whichflourished in the fifteenth century B.C., a succession of Delhiswas built, first by generations of Hindu rajas, only to be followedin A.D. 1193 by a roll call of Muslim dynasties: Ghori, Ghaznavi,Qutubshahi, Khilji, Tughlak, Lodhi, and Moghul. They seemed totrust the dubious comfort of walled cities, and their leaders choseto name Delhi, again and again, after themselves. This ended, atleast from the point of view of my childhood, with the Britishversion, sans walls, New Delhi, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens andbuilt in the ruin- filled wilderness south of the Old Citywalls.
The Moghul capital, Shahjahanabad, or the Old City or the City,or Shahar, was where the written history of my family began. Wewere only blessed with our paternal side of it. My mother’s sideeither kept few records or humbly kept its accomplishments underwraps. This written history, bound in red, was kept in mygrandfather’s home office.
When my grandfather—Babaji, as we called him—decided to move outof the City to the orchard estate, he was already a very successfulbarrister. His new house, the one in which I was born, was a brick-and-plaster version of a multi-roomed, grand Moghul tent with bitsof British fortress and Greco-Roman classicism thrown in to hintvaguely at grandeur. The road it was built on was named after mygrandfather, Raj Narain Road (with the patriotic Hindification ofnames that followed Independence, it is now Raj Narain Marg), andhad the number 7 on its front gate. From the time I can remember,we always referred to that house as Number 7, as in “I’m going toNumber 7,” or “You know that big tamarind tree in Number 7. . ..”
Not wishing to waste money, and full of the brio of someonerecently “England-returned” (he had been studying law in London),he designed it all himself. As the family story goes, it was atthis time that the British had decided to move their capital fromCalcutta to Delhi, and Lutyens was in the process of building thenew capital, to be named New Delhi. Lutyens asked my grandfather topick any piece of land in New Delhi and build on it—Lutyens mighthave designed the house himself had my grandfather asked—but mygrandfather dismissed the whole idea, saying, “Who wants to live inthat jungle?” Properties in “that jungle” are now worth as much asthose in central London and midtown Manhattan.
Years later, having proceeded beyond my three score and tenyears, I was awarded an honorary CBE (Commander of the BritishEmpire) by Queen Elizabeth II in Washington, D.C., another citydesigned by Lutyens, in a house also designed by Lutyens, theBritish ambassador’s residence. As I stared at my reflection therein a pair of dark Lutyens mirrors, dotted with glass rosettes, Icouldn’t help thinking that my life might have come full-circle. Icould have been born in a Lutyens house and received a grandrecognition of my life in a Lutyens house. But I was not destinedfor such easy symmetry, for easy anything.
Babaji’s whitewashed house consisted of a central “gallery”—ahall, really—leading to five very large rooms with fireplaces. Oneof these was the drawing room, and the others served as bedrooms,one to a family. Running along the front and back of the house weretwo long verandas lined with semi-classical, semi–Greco-Romanpillars. The back, east-facing veranda looked out on the YamunaRiver, or, as we called it with great familiarity, the Jumna River.It was here that so many of us, as infants, were rubbed with oiland left to absorb the morning sun. Because the land must havesloped down to the water, this veranda was one floor up, built overa very large, partially underground, damp, always cool cellar ortaikhana. My grandfather used to make wine here from grapes heimported from Afghanistan, but that must have been before I wasborn.
The front, west veranda faced the gardens, which had incorporatedthe remnants of the old orchard and now included a winding drive tothe front gate. The front and back verandas ended in rooms at eachcorner of the house, the front ones being shaped somewhat liketurrets. The functions of these corner rooms changed over theyears, but one of them at the back, facing east and south, alwaysremained my grandmother’s—and the family’s—chapel-like, Pooja kaKamra or Prayer Room. On top of the house were two levels of flatroofs, the one in the center being higher, and both edged with abattlement-like balustrade.
But the main house was not large enough to fit the only armyBabji was to see, a growing army of spirited grandchildren producedby his eight children. Some of these progeny lived at Number 7 allthe time, and some came and went. Babaji firmly believed in thejoint-family system, with himself presiding as the head of hisbrood, a system that...
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