Goat curry with goat’s milk paneer

The added skill of making paneer will open so many new culinary doors for you and is also great just spread onto some toasted sourdough. Peter Kuruvita's Coastal Kitchen

• serves

  6

• prep

  1 hour

• cook

  2 hours

• difficulty

  Mid

This is a favourite curry of mine and hopefully it will become one of yours too. It’s so simple to make and will disappear very quickly once made.

Ingredients

• 80 ml (⅓ cup) vegetable oil, ghee or coconut oil
• 3 cinnamon sticks, broken 
• ¾ tsp black mustard seeds
• 1½ tsp cumin seeds
• 6 green cardamom pods, bruised
• 2 onions, chopped
• 1 sprig curry leaves, leaves picked and torn
• 1 tsp red chilli flakes or 2 dried red chillies
• 5 Indian green chillies, crushed in a mortar pestle
• ¼ tsp ground cloves
• 1 tbsp garlic paste
• 1 tbsp ginger paste 
• Salt, to taste
• 1 kg boneless goat leg meat, cut into 2 cm pieces  
• 2 tsp tomato paste or 1 large tomato, chopped
• 300 g Thai eggplants, seeds removed (see Note)
• Fried curry leaves and shaved baby target beetroot, to serve 

Paneer

• 1-litre goat’s milk
• 150 ml lemon juice 

Masala paste

• 2 tsp garam masala
• 1½ tsp paprika
• ¾ tsp ground turmeric
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp roasted curry powder

Instructions

For the paneer, place the milk into a heavy-based saucepan and slowly bring to the boil stirring continuously. As soon as it come to the boil, turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice-it will curdle and separate. Leave it for 10 minutes, then strain through a sieve lined with a piece of dampened cheesecloth or muslin. Bring up the corners of the cloth and secure with string to make a bag. Hang the cheese cloth over the sink to drain for 15 minutes, then turn out the cheese into a bowl.

Meanwhile, for masala paste, place all the ingredients in a small bowl and add enough hot water to make a paste. Set aside.

Place a heavy-based saucepan over low-medium heat. When the pan is hot, add the oil and broken cinnamon sticks and cook until sizzling. Add the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and cardamom and stir for 30 seconds or until the popping reduces. Add the chopped onion and torn curry leaves and cook until the onion is translucent. Add the chilli flakes, fresh chilli, ground clove and half each of the garlic and ginger pastes. Cook until lightly browned. Add the masala paste and salt and cook, stirring continuously until the oil separates from the masala. Add the goat meat and stir until well coated. Add the tomato paste, Thai eggplant and enough water to nearly cover the meat. Cover the pan, reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally for 1 ½ hours or until the meat is tender. Stir through the remaining ginger and garlic pastes.

Serve the curry scattered with fried curry leaves, dollops of paneer and shaved target beetroot.

Note:

• You need to remove the seeds from the Thai eggplants because they are very bitter. To do this, trim the tops off the eggplants, then place them in a plastic bag and gently bash with a rolling pin to just open them up. Scrape out and discard as many seeds as you can, then rinse off the remainder.

Peter Kuruvita's Coastal Kitchen airs 8pm, Thursdays on SBS and then you can catch-up on SBS On Demand. Visit the program page for recipes, videos and more.

Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.

This is a favourite curry of mine and hopefully it will become one of yours too. It’s so simple to make and will disappear very quickly once made.