Kashmiri Saffron Lamb

Braised lamb shank — garlic, ginger, tomato

Half our regulars still order this by its old name, and we have never once corrected them. It went onto the early menus as the Lamb Shank Rogan Josh, and it appears on our printed event menus to this day. On the current menu it is the Kashmiri Saffron Lamb. Same shank, same pot, same afternoon.

Rogan josh is a Kashmiri dish with a Persian name. Rogan is oil or fat; josh is heat — the heat of the cooking, not the heat of the chilli. It is a braise, and a braise cannot be hurried.

We build ours on a lamb shank, which is the cut that rewards patience and punishes the lack of it. Shank is all connective tissue and hard work. Give it hours in a spiced, barely-moving pot with garlic, ginger and tomato and that tissue turns to gelatin, until the meat gives way at the touch of a spoon. Get it wrong and it is chewy. Get it right and the table goes quiet for a second.

Kashmiri kitchens traditionally lean on yogurt as well as tomato, which is part of why a good rogan josh sits close to the meat instead of swimming beside it — yogurt breaks down into the pot rather than sitting on top of it. The other part is simply time, and an oven that nobody opens.

The colour gives the technique away. Proper rogan josh runs deep red without running hot, and that is Kashmiri chilli — grown for colour rather than fire, which is why the dish looks fiercer than it eats.

It comes off the bone with a spoon, so it can be portioned at the table rather than plated in the kitchen: one shank per guest, and enough sauce around it to give the rice something to do. Order it from the menu any night, or have it built into a private-event menu, where it has been a fixture for years.

Dietary & spice

There is dairy in it — yogurt and ghee — so it is not one for a dairy-free table. It carries no gluten and no nuts, and the heat sits in the middle: deep rather than fierce. Most dishes here can be made milder or hotter to taste. The allergy menu lists every dish and what it carries.

Kashmiri Saffron Lamb.