Growing up in small-town India, where my father worked six days a week at a giant steel plant, I often went with him to the Sunday haat, or the weekly market. On a white scooter, I rode pillion through town to a place called Supela. I saw a butcher chopping goat meat. We bought some, wrapped in newspaper. Back home, my mother would cook the meat. I did not relish it. I could not put my finger on the reason. My mother rued my abstinence, even though my father did not insist.
Since then I have shed my inhibition, thanks to a dish my mother cooked and left behind. I would love to replicate it with a plant-based, guilt-free version someday.
As an adolescent, I had been hearing about this unique dish — my mother’s version of fried mutton. I think she called it a roast. When I tasted this dish, I could not resist relishing its umami richness and soft mouthfeel. By this time, I had grown a more determined cook, thumbing through the well-worn Dalda cookbook. (I once cooked rogan josh from the Hawkins cookbook. My mother was swept away by the Kashmiri dish’s fragrance and marveled at how meat cooked without onion and garlic could turn out so palatable. I don’t remember if I ate it — I might have tasted it as a chef tastes.) As I have grown older, I have pondered the idea of eating red meat — for health reasons, among others — and become more and more conflicted. I eat mutton occasionally, but if you eat meat at all (other than poultry), you must try my mother’s fried mutton. I had never seen, nor tasted anything like that until recently when I came across a Rajasthani preparation: Chef Atul Sikand's Jungli Maas recipe, in spice expert Marryam Reshi's book, “The Flavor of Spice.” But that dish is not exactly the same, even though the concept is similar: using minimal spice, draw out the essential flavor of meat by slow-cooking in ghee. I don’t know — nor will I ever — from where my mom had got hers or whether she conceived this dish on her own (My mother was a recipe developer in her own right. She could run with a concept and give it her own spin.)
It was her fried mutton that tempted me to savor meat. When I did, I could not cast it aside. I cooked it later. Then, for years I did not cook it, letting the memory of it rust. After she died in 2020, I pieced together the recipe after talking to my Kakima, or aunt, who mined her own memory of having seen my mother cook the dish. I cooked it recently for you, dear Tadka Tales reader.
Next week: My mother’s fried mutton recipe
(Note: If plant-based mutton ever becomes a reality, I would love to sub that for goat meat!)