Bindia’s Lamb Korma is an advanced Indian dish, which demands time, talent, and patience of the chef. However, the creamy Lamb Korma is always worth the toil and the wait!
The Korma is a known Indian curry (sauce/stew) that can be traced all the way back to the 16th century and the rule of the Mughal Dynasty in Northern India. The curry was very popular in the Mughal court kitchens and is rumored to have been served at the inauguration of the Taj Mahal.
At Bindia, we make the Lamb Korma as they do in the mountainous regions like Kashmir and Punjab where Bindia’s founder was born and raised. Here, you typically eat much milder food than in Southern India. Moreover, nuts, instead of animal fat, are often central to the cooking process by providing lots of healthy and nutritional calories, which are so essential in these colder regions.
Consequently, we have a special focus on the nuts – especially cashew – in our Lamb Korma.
As with our Butter curry, we have developed just the right mix of nuts and seeds for our Lamb Korma, which doesn’t just provide the dish with the healthy calories, but simultaneously produces an exquisite and creamy texture and a particular sweetness with subtle nutty nuances.
Altogether, it’s a quite complex dish demanding know-how and patience from the chef. In addition to nuts, this curry also requires plenty of onions, which are central to building the fundamental base of the curry, but also plentifully during the many phases of the preparation.
In Bindia’s Lamb Korma there’s plenty of ‘scent’ and ‘warmth’, which is derived from several temperings centered around ‘warm’ spices like cloves and cardamom.
Tempering is a specific spicing method common in India and its neighboring countries. During tempering, grinded spices are stir-fried at burning temperatures. When the crushed spices hit the boiling warm fat, they produce a heat shock response by discharging their essential oils and, thereby, rich flavor.
As the Indians don’t eat pork or beef in consideration of the country’s two largest religions Hinduism and Islam, they have instead become specialists in dealing with lamb and therefore have unique traditions and techniques for selecting the best meat and make it as delicious as possible. We therefore have clear guidelines for selecting and preparing our lamb at Bindia.
We only use meat from grazing sheep from New Zealand in our Lamb Korma, as this meat has the best smell and taste and doesn’t contain too much fat. We take measures to select for young, and therefore tender, meat, which we cut ourselves to ensure the final product is consistent with our standards.
We then roast the meat together with a tempering of ginger, carnation, and garlic, among others in a big cauldron. This removes the characteristic smell of lamb and gives the meat warm flavor and that Bindia character. All done according to traditional procedures.
Enjoy!
Try our Lamb Korma at your local Bindia in Østerbro, Nørrebro, Frederiksberg, Amager, Lyngby, and Søborg, or simply order it here.