Mitzi Wilson’s lamb gushtaba

I don’t know who I’m kidding. For over a week I’ve been meaning to post this recipe like I have thousands of screaming fans crying out for it. Well.. for the couple of you reading my blog, here’s a recipe by Mitzie Wilson, former editor of BBC Good Food and Delicious Magazines. It’s from her 2009 book Mince! 100 Fabulously Frugal Recipes – a book which well and truly does what it says on the tin.

Lamb Gushtaba

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 500g minced lamb
• 1 tsp ground paprika
• 1/4 tsp chilli powder – or more if you like spiciness
• 1 tsp fennel seeds, crushed
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamon
• 2cm piece of ginger, finely grated
• 1tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp rogan josh (or other tomato-based would also work) curry paste
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 200ml whipping cream
• 120g natural yoghurt
• pinch of sugar
• plain flour, for dusting.

It is quite a big list of ingredients but once you start to look into them, most items are store cupboard bits and pieces like garam masala and paprika.

Method: 

• Put the mince into a large bowl and add the paprika, chilli, fennel, coriander, pepper, cardamom and ginger.  
• Add 1 tablespoon of the yoghurt and mix all together (get your hands in there but remember to take any rings off! I didn’t and it wasn’t a pretty sight) 
• Shape into 16-18 balls dusting them with a little flour to prevent sticking.
• Heat oil in a frying pan and fry balls in batches for 10-15 mins until cooked and golden. Put them on a kitchen towel to absorb excess fat. Or, if you have no kitchen towel, go for some jazzy paper napkins left over from Christmas like me!
• Add curry paste into the pan you just used for the balls & cook for 1 minute. Stir in the sugar, cream and season with salt.
• Add meatballs to pan to warm up and stir in the remaining yoghurt and garam masala.
• Serve in bowls with chapatis or rice.

I served with rice and fresh coriander for seasoning. Because we’re both greedy guts, I also added half a plain naan each! This recipe was a bit fiddly with the balls and you definitely need to leave them on kitchen towel as lamb mince can be very fatty. The cream/yoghurt sauce made a nice change from the usual tomato based sauce and overall, we were impressed. I’ll be making this again soon.