Recipe: Stir-Fried Lamb With Chili, Cumin and Garlic
Time: At least 30 minutes
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1½ pounds lamb shoulder
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
½ teaspoon crushed red chili flakes, or to taste
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Peanut or neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn, to film the bottom of the skillet
1 cup trimmed and roughly chopped scallions, optional
Chopped fresh cilantro leaves for garnish, optional.
1. Cut lamb into ½-inch cubes (easier if meat is firmed in the freezer for 15 to 45 minutes). Toast cumin seeds in dry skillet over medium heat, shaking pan occasionally, until fragrant, a minute or 2. Toss together lamb with cumin, chili, garlic, soy sauce, a large pinch of salt and a healthy grinding of pepper. If you like, cover and refrigerate until ready to cook, up to 24 hours.
2. When ready to cook, put a tablespoon of oil in a large skillet (ideally, it will hold the lamb in one layer, or nearly so) and turn heat to high. When hot, add lamb. Cook, undisturbed, for about a minute, then stir once or twice to loosen lamb from skillet. Cook another minute, then stir again. Add scallions, if using, and cook, stirring occasionally, until scallions glisten and shrink a bit and the meat is about medium.
3. If you want a slightly saucier mixture, stir in ¼ cup water and cook another minute. Serve hot over rice, garnished, if you like, with cilantro.
Yield: 4 servings.
A Lamb Classic From Mongolia
IF I were to ask someone who knows about the world’s cuisines, “Where is the combination of chili, cumin, garlic and lamb a classic?” the most likely answers would be North Africa, the Middle East or elsewhere in western Asia. But this dish is straight from Mongolia, via the street vendors of Queens, and it’s little more than those four ingredients.
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On the street, the lamb is marinated for who knows how long, threaded onto skewers, grilled quickly over very hot charcoal and sold for a buck — maybe two — a stick. If you wanted to do it that way at home, you could, with good wood charcoal and a grill rack pretty close to the heat. You want to sear the lamb, but keep it medium rare.
The combination takes perfectly well to stir-frying. Start with lamb shoulder; leg is not lean or tender enough for this treatment. You can use loin if you prefer, but the dish will cost at least 10 times as much and it won’t be any better. Marinate it dry (or nearly so; I use a little soy sauce, for complexity) for as long as you like — 10 minutes, an hour, a day. The flavor will get a little stronger, though not much.
More important than the length of time is the freshness of your cumin. You absolutely need cumin seeds, not ground cumin. It’s worth the two or three minutes it takes to toast the seeds before marinating the meat. You can grind them if you like, but I like the little bit of crunch the seeds add.
For stir-frying, get your pan really hot, then add some oil and the lamb and leave it alone for a minute; let it sear. Stir it and let it sear again.
I offer a couple of other options, but it’s that basic combination of flavors, no matter where it’s from, that’s doing the work here.
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