Our very first post spoke about the delicious Padang style food, and with bags full of lamb left in the freezer I thought it best that I make use of the offcuts. Another Indonesian curry seemed appropriate.

When ever you read the travel guides like Lonely Planet they always make statements like, "make sure you eat like the locals do", "don't miss out on the street food". I haven't checked to see if those same statements are in the Indonesian Lonely Planet, and I'm not saying they are wrong, just that sometimes these statements are better suited to countries like Italy than the poorer third world countries.

Wikipedia tells me that Indonesia has a GDP per Capita of $2,239, which basically means the average person lives on about $6 per day, which is substantially more than it was 10 years ago when I was in Sumatra, and I would imagine substantially more than the average rural inhabitant lives on. With that being said, the quality of the raw ingredients in Indonesia can be somewhat less than desirable. Hence the reason I used the lamb offcuts, I wanted this dish to be authentic. To be honest, nothing was lost as a result of using the offcuts, this was delicious.

From the picture to the right you should be able to see that I used ribs and a few chops, trimming it and gently frying it before adding it to the pot so as to remove much unnecessary fat.  To create the paste I added Coriander seed, pepper corns, cumin, nutmeg, macadamia nuts (could not find candle nuts), cardamon seeds, dry chillies, cloves, garlic, ginger, turmeric and fried shallots. Dry frying the spices and browning the shallots before combining in a blender with a cup of coconut milk. I then placed the browned lamb, spice paste, some tamarind liquid, a stick on cinnamon and additional coconut milk into a large pan and simmered gently for about 15-20 mins. 

Served with rice and Ikan Bilis, makes for a finger licking and traditional street food style meal.For the full recipe see Gulai Cincang.