Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophes, the cautionary tale of one man’s ineptitude serving as a grim reminder for others to eschew hubris. I’m your author whose every day is a A Word-A-Day calendar, Jon O’Guin. Today’s dish is simple, elegant, weird, and may have caused me intense pain, but we’re pretty sure that was unrelated. If that stirring endorsement is all you need, here’s a link so you can get cooking yourself. Everybody else, let’s dig in!

What’s a Matar with You?

Alright, Keema Matar. What is it? How does it work? Why do I hear the endless cries? I can’t help with that last one, (no one can. Only the ritual will help you now) but I can cover the first two, because they’re basically the same question.

Bring forth the knife. Set free the guilty blood. Drink some wine.

Keema Matar is one of those dishes that, when translated, loses all coolness. Matar means “Peas” and Keema means “Ground meat”. That’s it. The dish is named “Mincemeat and Peas”. Very uncool. Pack it in.

What DOES make the dish interesting is the relatively nice pedigree it has behind it: Keema Matar was apparently a very popular Mughal dish, and the Mughals are mighty fine. (Note: As with most cultures that held large swathes of power in the 1500’s through the 1800’s, “mighty fine” has to brush away a LOT of various issues. Like, I was going to be glib later on about the Mughals eventually falling to the British due to not knowing what cannons were, but it turns out that the Mughals invented metal rockets, and an early version of the volley gun (the predecessor of the machine gun). The Mughals knew what fucking cannons were, they were SELLING THE POWDER to England.)

Were their guns better? I don’t know. They certainly seem to have been LONGER.

You wanna know how powerful the Mughals were? Two of their leaders are now known as “Akbar the Great”, and “Shah-Jahan”. Fun fact about those names: Akbar is literally Arabic for ‘greatest/best’, meaning the first man’s name is “Greatest, the Great”, and Shah Jahan comes from two words, Shah, meaning “King”, and Jahan, meaning “world”. He’s called “The King of the World”. THAT’S the name we choose to call him by. That is a level of flex that I literally only know of ONE other man achieving, and that’s because, as John Green reminds us, The Mongols are always the Exception. (“Genghis Khan” translates to “Khan from Sea to Sea”) You’re actually familiar with the works of both Akbar AND Shah Jahan. When Shah Jahan’s wife died, he was so upset he invented a Wonder of the World to honor her.

THIS is the kind of tombstone you get when your husband is nicknamed “THE KING OF THE WORLD”

Akbar is widely considered the OG of the Mughal Empire: it was founded by his grandfather, and grew bigger under his father, but Akbar is the one who finally formalized the order of the empire, as well as conquering Bengal, the Kabul region and more.  Akbar is the reason that Calcutta is IN India. Conflict with the Mughals is what created a foothold for Portugal and later England into the Indian subcontinent, by a lease agreement with the Gujarat Sultanate, negotiated to give the Sultanate powerful allies to resit the Mughals.

In short, a LOT of what makes India, well, India, is tied up in the Mughals. Not everything, as we’ll get to in a moment, but a lot. So it’s a hell of a pedigree to note that Keema Matar was a celebratory food for the rich and wealthy among the Mughals, served at weddings and other celebrations. The Royal family themselves were said to eat it every WEEK, demonstrating their power and wealth. What dish could be such an impressive show of status?

Now, I already spent a lot of time in the Chutney post highlighting that I am not a perfect translator of the narrative of India. So I will briefly state that this summary, while it might be upsetting, is meant to contextualize for an American audience, not in any way detract from the rich culinary history of India.

Because it’s basically just Chili with Peas instead of beans.

Please hold your jeers until the end, thank you.

The Explosive Truth

So, we should expand on that, before the riots start: Keema Matar is a mixture of ground meat in a highly-spiced sauce, typically made with tomatoes these days, and often using a rich mixture of Indian spices that are typically a form of garam masala, a mixed blend of “warming” spices. Because of this, the dish frequently has a fair amount of chili powder and cumin in it, as well as cinnamon and a wide variety of other spices. And if you gave the typical American a bowl of ground beef in a tomato sauce flavored with chili powder and cumin, they would immediately identify the dish as a form of chili. Again, this is in NO WAY meant to belittle the dish: the present-day associations with Chili did not exist in 1700 India, nor had spice production been globalized and industrialized to the same extent.

To THIS DAY, Black Pepper, Cardamom, Cinnamon and Turmeric, all spices you can find in Keema Matar recipes, remain some of the most expensive spices by weight in the world. These flavors used to come at a HIGH cost, and nations could grow rich off of their sale, as the Mughals did, as Renaissance Italy did, etc. Real, pure vanilla extract sells for about $4 an ounce right now, which, for context, means that it is worth MORE per ounce than a $100 bottle of alcohol.

This whiskey is cheaper than an equivalent amount of vanilla extract. Or at least, it WOULD be, if not for the fact that alcohol is taxed at a higher rate.

And meat used to be much more expensive as well, especially beef, before the markets of Asia and Europe had access to the vast farmland potential of the Americas and Australia. “A highly-spiced dish of beef” was the 1500’s equivalent of a high-end steak served with expensive wine: not impossible, but certainly pricey.

Also, you may have notices that I targeted beef twice in that, which may, with a moment of reflection, jar with your conception of the culinary habits of India, ie, their respect for cows. Well, that’s one of the elements of the Mughal empire that DIDN’T have quite as persistent a hold on India: they were a Muslim empire. (Though, again, we shouldn’t downplay how important even “not as important” is: the current estimate of Muslims in India is 172 million people. That’s more than the number of Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran combined.) When Hindi families make the dish, they tend to rely on Mutton as the go-to meat. But I can also be made with chicken, or even goat or pork (though the last one would be a LITTLE out of the spirit, given the Mughal’s muslim background…but then again, I know of plenty of places that serve beef curries from Hindi sources)

Not you, Beef Rendang. You’re from Malaysia, so you were always cool with beef.

The recipe I’m following for the dish comes from Milk Street. Is it authentic? Probably not. DEFINITELY not, once I get done with it. But what it was, to me, was engagingly WEIRD. So, since we’ve already offended millions, let’s fumble this bad boy and piss EVERYONE off.

Bake it Up, Shake it Up, Make it Up

There is no baking in this recipe. Do not listen to Title Jon. Ever, by preference, but ‘for legitimate instruction’ at least. So, the basics of the recipe are very simple: you sweat some aromatics, bloom some spices, sauce it up, cook some meat, and bring everything together. The WAY it does it, however, is fairly interesting/weird. You start by cutting up some aromatics. Specifically you finely chop some red onion, and grate up garlic and ginger.

It’s interesting that the red onion is the thing that makes this an Indian aromatic base, versus a Chinese aromatic base.

Then, you make your tomato sauce. Not just “buy” your tomato sauce, oh no, you MAKE this stuff by mixing a can of whole peeled tomatoes, where you have to crush up the tomatoes into smaller pieces, with some water and tomato paste. You want some texture, and some more concentrated tomato flavor, hence the mixture.

Then, sweat your onions ‘until softened and starting to brown”. During that time, you’re going to want to get your garam masala. You could make your own, but this recipe just calls for some pre…made…Uhm…what? Where the heck is the Garam Masala? I JUST made Turkey burger with it. There should be like, an envelope of spices, and a little bag, and probably a jar…There’s NOTHING. Oh no. I should have found that out before I had the onion in the pan. I ask my family to check for it, since I have to stir the onions…nothing. Okay, that’s…fine. I DO have Ras el hanout, which is an Arabic spice mix of chili powder, cumin, coriander, paprika, cinnamon and pepper. That’s…BASICALLY the same set-up as garam masala. Just stir in some curry powder, and a little clove/nutmeg, and Boom, you’ve kind of replicated garam masala in a hurry. (You COULD do it with the respective ingredients, and technically garam masala is supposed to be toasted prior to grinding, but when you’re stuck with onion in the pan, needs must.)

This is much lighter than it should be, but it’s what we’ve got.
A statement uttered by FAR too many Hollywood executives.

All we need now is to know how much of this made-up mix we need. Let’s check the recipe and…oh. That’s interesting. When I swapped away from the recipe on the Milk Street app, it kicked me out of the app. That’s fine, I’ll just log back in, and…huh. It took me to the archive of recipes, not the one I need. Well, I’ll just search for…oh, there’s no search function on the mobile app. There’s ‘filters’ I can apply, but not HELPFUL ones like “Indian” or “Beef”, just like “which book is the recipe from” or “is this an entrée or a dessert?” MY SITE has more reliable navigation than this! FUCK. Log out, log back in, still just skips the recipe. Scroll through the archive…alright, I didn’t see it, but I was speed-scrolling through FIVE HUNDRED OPTIONS. Alright, did anyone else make this recipe? These guys…just link back to the page I can’t get working, great…these guys…DO. Three Tablespoons. Awesome. That definitely didn’t take too long, right?

Barely look burned at all.

Spices in, you stir them in the not-at-all-slightly-burned onions and garlic and ginger to wake up the volatile oils, before adding the tomato sauce and stirring together to infuse. The mixture will be chunky, and you’ll cook it for a couple minutes until it thickens mildly.

At that point, you get to the point that really interested me: You add the beef. Take some fairly lean beef, and crumble it over the top of the sauce, without stirring it in, sprinkle salt over the beef, and then slap a lid on it to steam.

Steam that pink meat, baby!

Yeah, you don’t incorporate the beef into the sauce at first. I don’t think that’s strictly traditional, but it’s a very interesting cooking technique. It will be a LITTLE worrying, since when I crumbled the beef, it basically coated the ENTIRE pan, and the salt felt like it might be a little much, which was not a great thing for my nerves, given the issues with the spices, and the web page issue, and the lid, and so on, so I ended up using the steaming time to drink a glass of red wine and try and calm down.

Once the beef has steamed to grey, stir it into the sauce, and add the peas, cooking until the peas and beef are cooked through. Then comes another interesting little tweak: you take the pan off the stove, pop the lid on, and let it gently cool for 5 minutes, because we have one last ingredient to add:

Clouds?

Yes, for a little richness, and to balance the spices, you incorporate some whole-milk yogurt. You want to let the mixture cool before the yogurt goes in, because a hotter mixture will raise the odds of the yogurt curdling.

Plop the mix into bowls, and serve with additional yogurt, and some more chopped onion, and…yeah, this really is SO MUCH like Chili.

It’s weirdly kind of Christmas-y, too. The red onion, the green peas.

Even flavor-wise: it’s warm and spicy, with cooling yogurt and crunchy onions. It evokes the experience of chili with a not-so-subtly different flavor profile. Nate quite liked it, as did I. In an authentic set-up, we’d have something like Roti or Naan to scoop/serve the Keema with, but I did NOT have time to make that, nor any on hand. Nate tried it over cold left-over rice (“A bad idea”, he clarified) while I used two slices of white bread, which worked fine, if a little weird texturally. I will note that the next day, I had a bit of a rough time: bit of a stomachache, and I needed to spend a bit of time sorting myself out, as it were.  But we think that was just an unfortunate coincidence because A: Nate had no such issues, and B: it was actually the next NIGHT,  so it’s more likely something I had for Breakfast/lunch didn’t agree with me. (it’s also entirely possible That it WAS because of the Keema, but purely a matter of my kit-bashed spice mix hitting me weird) I’d honestly recommend it, assuming you pick up some legitimate Garam Masala.

THURSDAY: I HAD AN IDEA PARTWAY THROUGH THE POST, BUT NOW I’VE LOST IT. TOTALLY GONE. MAYBE I’LL REVIEW SOMETHING INSTEAD.

MONDAY: THINGS GET A LITTLE FRY-GHTENING, AS JON COOKS A LOT OF POTATOES FOR FUN.

Recipe

Keema Matar

Serves 4

Ingredients

14 ½  oz can whole peeled tomatoes

2 tbsp tomato paste

3 tbsps grapeseed or other neutral oil

1 large red onion, finely chopped

4 large garlic cloves, finely grated

4 tsps finely grated fresh ginger

3 tbsps garam masala (or panic-derived spice mix)

Kosher salt and ground black pepper

1 lb 90 percent lean ground beef

2 cups frozen peas

½  cup plain whole-milk yogurt, plus more to serve

1/3  cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems (we didn’t use this, due to Nate’s distaste for Cilantro)

Preparation

1. In a medium bowl, use your hands to crush the tomatoes into small pieces. Stir in ½ cup water and the tomato paste, then set aside. In a 12-inch skillet over medium-high, heat the oil until shimmering. Measure out and reserve ¼ cup of the onion, then add the remainder to the skillet. Cook, stirring, until softened and beginning to brown, about 6 minutes. Add the garlic and ginger and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 1 minute.

2. Reduce to low, add the garam masala and ½ teaspoon pepper, then cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in the tomato mixture. Bring to a simmer over medium and cook, stirring and scraping up any spices, until the mixture is slightly thickened, about 5 minutes.

3. Break the ground beef into 1- to 2-inch pieces and add to the skillet on top of the tomato mixture, but do not stir. Sprinkle 4 teaspoons salt over the beef, then cover, reduce to medium-low and cook without stirring until the beef is no longer pink on the exterior, about 6 minutes.

4. Stir in the peas and cook, uncovered and breaking up the bits of beef, until the meat is no longer pink, another 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and let stand, covered, for 5 minutes. Stir in the yogurt. Serve topped with the cilantro, the reserved chopped onion and with additional yogurt.