I do like recipes on the YouTube curry channel Al’s Kitchen but they do take a bit of work to follow. It doesn’t help that the iOS YouTube app seems buggy when it comes to displaying the full description. I ended up having to take notes from the video although, having checked today from my Windows box, I can see that it should have been all there for me. Anyway, this is how I used Al’s video to cook up a bhuna using a boneless roll of lamb shoulder.

Step one is to boil 600g of peeled and quartered onions in about the same volume of water. That takes about 10-15 minutes to soften them after which the water can be poured off (and saved) and the softened onions can be pureed with a stick blender. While those onions are boiling, a further 300g of onion along with some capsicum pepper (he said half each of red and green – I used a whole pepper of each colour but setting the tops and bottoms aside) get prepared. All got cut into large slices and then flash fried in a small amount of oil, which softens them a bit but mainly adds some charring and colour. The onion peelings (except for the bases, which could contain embedded dirt) and the pepper offcuts got slow cooked with about a litre of just-boiled water, creating a veg stock for future use.

That is the preparation stage. Next comes cooking the onion puree in about 150ml oil along with 1 tsp salt and 1.5 tsp of sugar. Use a high heat and stir regularly (with the salt and sugar and all other additions, it makes sense to check you have them before you start and to weigh them out into containers before the main cooking starts). After eight minutes, drop in ginger and garlic paste (I used generous squirts from ginger and garlic tubes – I see the official recipe says 3tbsp), a bit of cinnamon stick and 6 cracked cardamon pods (I used the seeds from about 8 pods, most of which were quite old), cooking for another 2 minutes.

For the second block, turn the heat down low and stir in the spices. I used 1 tsp dried fenugreek, 1 tsp chilli powder, 2 tsp garam masala, another 0.5 tbsp garam masala (since I didn’t have tandoori masala), 0.5 tsp tumeric (I couldn’t figure out what deggi mirch was by listening to the video – it turns out to be a chilli and capsicum blend), 2.5 tbsp curry powder and about 1 tbsp cumin (the last not in the original recipe but I’ve still got a large bag of it!). Both the fenugreek and cumin were run through a spice grinder first. As well as the dry spices, I also put in 5 tbsp tomato puree, loosed with some water so it poured easily, the chopped meat and the reserved onion water. That was covered and simmered for another ten minutes, which might have been enough for the suggested chicken thighs but I ended up simmering for another ten minutes to cook the lamb.

For the final ten minutes, the lid is removed and the heat is turned up. The flash-fried pepper and onion from earlier is added along with a couple of quartered tomatoes and a handful of curry leaves (I think he used kasoori methi, which is dried fenugreek leaves but, again, that’s what I had in the cupboard). It is stirred regularly to reduce the sauce, which is the key characteristic of a bhuna.

Once done, I turned off the heat and mixed in some lemon juice (I could have used more) and, on my place, some chopped coriander from the freezer (Jane doesn’t like it). The meat was still a bit chewy but cooked and with a good lamb flavour. All in all, very successful and will end up doing the two of us for six meals (Saturday, Sunday and tonight).

If you want to compare to the original video, here it is: