When did you last eat Mutton?

Other than the occasional weekly pie at the football, and the meat there may be subject to some debate, it must have been a while.  But a recent supply of succulent diced mutton from our good friends at Harris Farm Meats, had us scouring the recipes.  We came up with Mutton Kabsa, and one pot cooking on the hob is always good for me.

Firstly here’s what you need, and if you prepare the ingredients beforehand it really is a doddle:

2 medium onions, sliced; half tsp ginger paste; 500g diced mutton; salt to taste; zest of an orange; one large, or two small, potatoes cut into wedges; half tsp black pepper powder; half tsp cardamom, ground; half tsp cinnamon; tbsp tomato paste; 2 tomatoes, finely chopped; one and half cups rice, soaked; 2 cups shredded carrot; and for the topping – third cup flaked almonds, toasted; handful pine nuts and crispy fried onion.

Heat some extra virgin Scottish rapeseed oil in a wok and fry the onion, adding the ginger paste to saute when the onion begins to brown.  Add the mutton and brown on oil sides.

Add the salt, orange zest, black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, tomato paste and tomato, and cook through.

When the oil rises to the surface add 1 litre water, cover and cook slowly (or as the recipe says, on a medium flame…).  When meat half done add the spuds and cook through.

Remove the meat from the pan and place on a baking tray and broil for 10 mins in the oven.  Here I’d suggest adding sufficient juice from the pan to cover the meat, letting it stay tender and moist, resting in a slow oven.

In the remainder of the liquid add the rice and carrot.  Cover and cook until rice 3/4 done and water absorbed.  Leave it for a further 10 mins.

Dish out the rice in serving platter, add the meat and potato, sprinkle with the almonds, pine nuts and  fried onion.  Stand back, serve and enjoy.  A glass of milk-from-your-childhood, the stuff that leaves a stain on the glass, fresh from the farm gate at Thorntonhall Ice Cream, completes the meal.

Strikes me this would be good with goat too.

We need to talk about

Amazon, and in particular Amazon Logistics.  How do they perform where you are?

For the fourth time in recent months the wonderful Amazon have told me that my parcel has been delivered, handed to the resident no less.  Yet here I am, wondering what’s gone wrong this time.

In days gone by Amazon provided an excellent service.  The postie arrives daily in his little red van, and those cardboard wrapped packages are handed over.  Then they moved to couriers, professional ones.  I am thinking here of Derek, who drove for DPD, and who knew his patch intimately.  He gave a one hour delivery window, an accurate one, tooted his horn on the way past, went along the road to turn, and delivered, on time, always.

Now we are consigned to the mystery that is Amazon Logistics, and those packages disappear, regularly.  Once I had a driver phone for directions.  But these days it is the wonder of the satnav that replaces human contact.

And out here in the boondocks, where each postcode covers 15 properties, some several miles apart, the Amazon Logistics driver is found out.  In goes the postcode, and the screen points out a direction.  But it is usually the wrong one.  For those 15 properties are listed alphabetically, and off our man goes, following instructions, to the house beginning with A.  And it all goes wrong.  This one has a P, and he knows that.

Delivered, k-ching, handed to the resident, named on the website.  And so the process begins again – where’s my parcel – we’ll send another, round in circles.

Occasionally both turn up, and one has to be returned, now at the expense of the customer of course.

The latest delivery success came the following day, via the school bus, after the wrong address sent it to school, to be handed over and brought home by Girl Urchin, oblivious of course to those at Amazon and their Logistics team.

The latest has disappeared, even the school bus cannot solve the problem.

And get this, the solution from Amazon, is to cancel and refund.  We’re not sending any more they say, as they’re unlikely to arrive.  But feel free to re-order….

So there you go, Amazon, having been provided with all the reasons for the delivery failures, despite the information they have of safe arrival, now prefer to look after their current delivery arrangements, and to tell their long-standing customers that they won’t make rural deliveries.

Well guess what Amazon, having cancelled all the open orders in the system, there will be no more.  No longer will I turn a blind eye to the conditions and pressures on the staff in your sheds; no longer will I value the purchasing power of your prices.  You refuse to deliver; I refuse to buy.

If you insist in using unprofessional drivers, who have not the gumption to deliver correctly but instead feed bull back to the Amazon system; if you cannot see that delivery is the prime issue of customer service; if you cannot arrange an alternative delivery through those who have provided a proven and excellent service to you for years, then the buyer will beware.

So how do Amazon do where you are?  Live rurally, off the beaten track?  Don’t leave your online purchases to the whims of Amazon Logistics, their satnavs and their drivers.  And don’t even dream that customer services will come to your rescue.  Another month of the Prime you have already cancelled is not a solution.

Amazon – we won’t deliver

A rare treat

It was intended for Sunday Lunch but events intervened.  It might seem a bit extravagant for a Monday after work but really we couldn’t wait to put this recipe to the test.  Let me bring to you Goat Kelantan.

We are very fortunate in these parts to have easy access to Harris Farm Meats.  Not content with producing delicious mutton and rare breed pork, the lovely Ruth Harris and her family have been nurturing and breeding goats for the past year or so, and it’s going down a treat with recipes and suggestions being shared on social media.

First up, here’s what you need:

750g diced meat; 4 tbsp Scottish rapeseed oil; 2 tsp tamarind pulp; 4 stalks lemongrass; 1 cup water (I’ve used bottled the chemical smell of the local supply being unsuitable for whisky, or goat); 1 cup coconut milk; half tsp sugar; 1 tsp salt.

For the marinade – 1 tsp turmeric; 1 tsp chilli powder; 1 tbsp sugar; half tsp salt.

And for the spice paste –  4 cashew nuts; 2 cm sliced ginger; 9 dried chillies; 6 cloves garlic; 3 fresh red chillies; 5 shallots.

The marinade is first.  In a bowl mix the ingredients from the second list and rub well into the meat.  Set aside for an hour, or more.

The spice paste can be made either with the aid of a blender or pestle & mortar.  After soaking the chillies in water, cut the chillies into lengths.  Halve the garlic cloves, and the shallots; slice the red chillies.  Four cashews is just a tad precise – chuLeave itck a wee handful in.  With Urchins to feed I’ve eased back on the heat from the above.  Blend all the ingredients, using a drop of oil.  Set aside.

Once the marinade has matured and the paste made, heat the oil in a wok and stir-fry the spice paste for 5 mins to release the aromas.  Add the tamarind and the lemongrass, using only the bottom third, outer layer removed, and inner part bruised.  Stir-fry for 3 mins.  Add the water, stir and cook for a further 3 mins.  Then add in the meat, coconut milk, sugar and salt.  Bring to simmer and transfer to casserole dish.

Leave it to cook slowly in a low oven for a couple of hours, whilst you head off to a music class.  On return, starving weans to feed, serve hot, topped with remaining gravy.

Not unexpectedly the reaction was mixed around the table, but these days if there’s only one whining I don’t like that it counts very much as a Yes Chef!  Too much chilli, moaned Boy Urchin.  And he’s not wrong; if I were to do it again I’d probably leave out the heat altogether, for there’s enough flavour in the other ingredients not to need to need it.

More importantly Ruth’s deliciously tender goat meat does not need it, falling apart, succulent.  Or as Girl Urchin said, when we can we have that again, and that indeed is very high praise.  Mind you I do have a recipe for Moroccan Goat looking very tempting.