LAMB CURRY with spinach

If you're dieting and fancy a curry in a hurry, we have just the recipe for you. We used leg of lamb for this quick cook LAMB CURRY WITH SPINACH.
Quite often we use budget cuts of meat and slow cook, but today we wanted to test out this quick (new) recipe using the half price leg of lamb that was on offer at the supermarket. We weren't disappointed.
Our recipe is an amalgamation - using what we had in the cupboard. Yoghurt gave the whole dish something special, and it was the first time we had used it.
Curries are often thought of as a no go area when
trying to lose weight, because of the fat content. At around 500 calories - this lamb curry and rice certainly tasted authentic. We actually used very little fat - as it wasn't necessary. The ingredients themselves were so flavoursome - and this is one of the best curries we've eaten in a long time.
It's the first time we've used yoghurt as a curry base. Surprisingly creamy (without using cream) - and a lovely consistency. We usually make curries with a tomato base - and we found the yoghurt made a huge difference to the end result. We'll definitely be making this one again, that's for sure! NB: I wouldn't freeze or reheat a yoghurt based curry.
To cut down on time, you could make this with a shop bought curry paste (eg rogan josh) - and add a few of your own ingredients to give it a unique twist. If we did that, we would use additional garlic, chopped fresh tomatoes and maybe a bit of fresh ginger to add fragrance.
The sauce was absolutely delicious, nice and thick and would work really well as a VEGETARIAN curry using eg cauliflower, sweet potatoes and lentil or chickpeas. I'll probably be doing that next time. Anyway, here's our recipe:

LAMB CURRY WITH SPINACH

Ingredients (serves four)

500g cubed leg (or lean) lamb

small bag of spinach

olive oil

200g uncooked basmati rice 

a few cardamon pods for the rice (optional)

Spices we used for this curry 

(or BUY a ready made curry paste such as rogan josh)

(one teaspoon of each)

fenugreek, fennel, coriander, cumin, mustard (all seeds)

one teaspoon ground turmeric

one teaspoon ground mace

one finely diced chilli

one inch grated ginger

four cloves garlic

couple of onions (chopped)

salt/pepper

two large finely chopped tomatoes

three tablespoons full fat plain yoghurt (do not use low fat or it will split)

*****

Brown the cubed lamb in a frying pan.

Mix the spice (SEEDS) together in a frying pan and fry until they start to pop or smoke. Remove from the heat, cool then grind.

Add the turmeric and mace.

Add the grated ginger. 

Fry the onions for about 5 minutes. Add the crushed garlic and finely diced chilli. Add these to the rest of the spices.

Add the salt and pepper (we used around a teaspoon of each).

Pour the spice mix over the lamb cubes and add the chopped tomatoes. Bring to the boil then simmer for 10 - 15 minutes.

Add the plain yoghurt and continue cooking on a low heat until the lamb is cooked (we cooked ours for a further 20 minutes). 

Turn off the heat and let the curry rest and marinate while you cook the rice. 

Open the cardamon pods, remove, crush the seeds and mix into the rice. Cook the basmati rice according to the packet instructions. 

*****

REMEMBER: We all have a calorie allowance - do you know yours?

We began our weight loss journey in January 2011 - and began our blog in June 2011. Here's a link to the first post. (here's the link).

We like to post our main meals to show you what CAN be eaten. You won’t find us posting every last morsel though – but we hope this gives you an idea of how far calories can go! I'm currently going through the photographs and replacing them with more website friendly versions which will allow the blog to load quickly. 

Read about our UNIQUE METHOD of weight loss and find out how you can lose weight eating the food you love.

Copyright © forget dieting forever, all rights reserved.