My Mother has a few tips for cooking sabzi (vegetables) and meat curries, her style:

Lots and lots of masala, which is the onion and tomato base for most curries
For lots of vegetables such as turnips, cauliflower, courgettes, mash them up so meld into the masala
A much higher ratio of meat than vegetables
Lots and lots of fresh coriander and green chillis
Lots of oil/ghee
Serve with a roti smeared with a healthy dollop of butter

Essentially, her style was to try and get the vegetables to be as inconspicuous as possible.

Shaljam Gosht Recipe - Turnip and Meat Curry

She really really enjoyed vegetables like turnips, but for some reason she believed no one else does, especially the men. I don't know why. I will never know why. But whenever I ask her for a meat and vegetable recipe, I always get advice along the lines of 'bohot sare pyaaz dalna' (add lots of onions), 'tail acha sa daal lena, sabzi me acha lagta hai' (add lots of oil, it tastes good in vegetables), 'roti pe butter laga ke khilana' (put butter on the roti) etc.

In summary, make the vegetables as inoffensive to the men as possible. The men must not know about the vegetables. Like I said, I don't know and I probably won't ever know.

Can the men out there do me a favour, and leave a comment on this post with their take on this? So I can show my Mum and let her know not all men have this misguided fear of turnips and other vegetables?

I cooked this recipe with guidance from both my Mother and MIL. They both boil and mash their turnips separately before adding them in with the meat. I've had a Shaljam Gosht curry cooked similar to Aloo Gosht once, with the turnips cut up into chunks, and I felt like it retained a slight odd taste/odour to it. If you have also felt the taste/odour problem in that kind of Shaljam Gosht, try this method out and let me know what you think.

Mashing the turnips really allows the flavour of the meat, onions, tomatoes, and spices to absorb into it. This genuinely is a really outstanding recipe and one that will have you licking your fingers clean! This goes served pretty well with both roti and plain white basmati rice.

Enjoy, with love x

📋 Recipe

Shaljam Gosht Recipe - Turnip and Meat Curry

Cook Time: 1 40

Total Time: 1 40

Servings: servings

4.62 from 47 votes

Print Rate

Ingredients

1.1 lb (½ kg) lamb or mutton. bone in
2 (300 g) large onions diced
2 (350 g) large tomatoes diced
6 cloves garlic
1 thumb sized piece of ginger minced
3 teaspoon salt or to taste
1 teaspoon turmeric half for the meat, half for boiling the turnips in
1.5 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper the coarse variety
2 teaspoon paprika/kashmiri red chilli powder
4 turnips about 400g/2 cups
⅓ cup (80 ml) oil
fresh coriander. chopped for garnish
1-2 green chillies cut into 2-3 pieces

Instructions

Add all the ingredients aside from the turnips, green chilli, coriander and oil into a pot. Add 1.5 cups of water, bring to a boil, and then simmer on low with the lid on for 1hr 15 minutes. Check a few times in between to ensure the water hasn't dried out completely, topping up by a small amount if required
In a seperate pot, add the turnips with 1tsp salt and 0.5tsp turmeric and enough water to submerge the turnips. Cook these until fully done. Mash and set aside - I like to keep mine chunky for some texture. Reserve the cooking water
Once the meat mixture cook time is up, add the oil. Turn the heat to high and begin to saute the mixture, stirring the pot constantly and scraping the bottom of the pot to ensure nothing is catching. You want to keep sauting this for as long as you can - the longer you do it the better the curry will end up tasting. Evenetually the curry will become completely dry and will look very oily
Add in the mashed turnips and 1 cup water (use up the reserved turip water too). Simmer on low with the lid on for 15 minutes, then for 2-3 minutes on high without the lid.
Add in the chopped coriander and green chilli just before serving. Serve hot

Notes

This is not a spicy curry. If you feel like it isn't hot enough for you, you can add some red chilli powder to taste.

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Comments

4.62 from 47 votes (45 ratings without comment)

Shaljam Gosht Recipe - Turnip and Meat Curry

📋 Recipe