Cumin Lamb Chops with Mango Mint Sauce
A perfectly ripe mango offers plenty of delicious options but liquidising it with coriander and mint, chilli and lime juice produces a sweet and sour, herby sauce that is particularly good with lamb chops or prawns. Either could be cooked on the barbecue. Both benefit from a quick lime marinade and dusting of ground cumin before cooking. It wasnt barbecue weather when I made this one recently, so I opted for lamb chops, fried briefly and finished in a hot oven. The cumin gave them a light crusty finish and gentle smoky flavour. Rice is what you need with this and it dovetails neatly with cooking time for the chops, resulting in a classy Anglo-Indian-style meal to serve with mango chutney and yoghurt to cool the mild chilli heat in the sauce. Complete the meal with wedges of papaya with lime squeezed on top.
A perfectly ripe mango offers plenty of delicious options but liquidising it with coriander and mint, chilli and lime juice produces a sweet and sour, herby sauce that is particularly good with lamb chops or prawns. Either could be cooked on the barbecue. Both benefit from a quick lime marinade and dusting of ground cumin before cooking. It wasnt barbecue weather when I made this one recently, so I opted for lamb chops, fried briefly and finished in a hot oven. The cumin gave them a light crusty finish and gentle smoky flavour. Rice is what you need with this and it dovetails neatly with cooking time for the chops, resulting in a classy Anglo-Indian-style meal to serve with mango chutney and yoghurt to cool the mild chilli heat in the sauce. Complete the meal with wedges of papaya with lime squeezed on top.
- Carbohydrate 58.2848312487503 g
- Cholesterol 715.68 mg
- Fat 82.7802875 g
- Fiber 3.61987490057945 g
- Protein 57.1099375 g
- Saturated Fat 39.953217734375 g
- Serving Size 1 1 Serving (511g)
- Sodium 230.526957975965 mg
- Sugar 54.6649563481708 g
- Trans Fat 8.92497054687498 g
- Calories 1211 calories
Step-by-step
- Heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6.
- Rinse the rice until the water runs clear. Place in a pan with a good fitting lid. Add 300ml water. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat to very low, cover and cook for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat.
- Leave, covered, for at least 10 minutes for the rice to finish cooking in the steam.
- Place the chops on a plate and smear with juice from half the lime.
- Squeeze the remaining half lime in the bowl of a food processor. Slice the cheeks off the mango and cut the flesh into the bowl, adding the mint leaves. Set aside a few sprigs of coriander and coarsely chop the rest, stalks and all. Split the chilli, scrape out the seeds, coarsely chop and add to the mango together with the coriander. Add sugar, salt and yoghurt. Blitz smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Transfer to a serving bowl.
- Heat the oil in a frying pan. Dust half the chops generously with cumin and fry both sides for a couple of minutes without moving to make a thin crust. Transfer to a small roasting tin. Cook the remaining chops and add to the tin.
- Roast for 10-20 minutes depending on the thickness of the chops and how pink you like your meat. Rest for a few minutes then serve with rice garnished with the reserved coriander, sauce, yoghurt and chutney.
Managing Moisture and Starch
Washing basmati grains removes excess surface starch amylose, which otherwise gelatinizes during boiling and causes the grains to clump together. Rinsing until the water runs clear ensures distinct, fluffy grains once absorption finishes. Steaming off the heat for 10 minutes allows residual moisture to distribute evenly through the grain center via gelatinization of the core starches.Balancing Sweet and Acid
Fruit sauces rely on organic acids to cut through high-fat proteins like lamb. Lime juice lowers the pH of the mango, mint, and yoghurt mixture, sharpening the palate while capsaicin from the bird's eye chilli binds to transient receptor potential receptors to register heat. Fat droplets from the yoghurt coat the tongue, mitigating excessive capsaicin perception.
