Kosha Mangsho...Oppa Bongo style!

Let's face it, I never ever ever cooked Bengali food (except Ilish maach shorshe bata jhol) before I got married. Cooking for me was always an experiment. I wanted to try new flavours and not something I already knew about. Then along came the husband who brought with him the wish to eat Bengali food everyday. And so we got a Bengali cook, thanks to whom, I learned a lot of Bengali dishes.

And the cook made a mean Kosha Mangsho! A slow cooked lip smacking mutton delicacy. I never bothered learning this from her because I hadn't planned on firing her so soon and so multiple attempts at making this awesome dish went awry. The mutton didn't taste bad at all, it was amazing mutton curry, but it just wasn't Kosha Mangsho! You see, Kosha Mangsho has to be so dark brown that it must almost look black! And mine always had a nice earthy brown colour. I just didn't know what I was doing wrong!

But that's because I was taking tips from the wrong people. Multiple Bengali ladies, including my mom, were giving me wrong instructions. All they told me was that "Everything's the same as normal mutton curry, it's just that instead of pressure cooking it, you koshao it a bit." Which means you slow cook it. "That's it?" I would ask. "That's it", they would reply.

Bullcrap!!!

Image courtesy senskitchen.com

My rating for this dish
 - 9/10


Here, dear readers, are the differences between Kosha Mangsho and mutton curry, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Follow these steps and you shall get a nice, yummy, dark mutton dish that'll leave you eating out of the kadhai.

1. Do not marinate the mutton in curd. Do not add curd to this recipe at all. This will give it a regular curry flavour which you don't want.
2. Marinate the mutton only in salt and ginger-garlic paste. You may also want to use raw papaya paste for marination as this helps as a meat tenderizer. I usually do not use papaya myself, because it lends its taste to the dish which I do not prefer.
3. Cook it in ghee. Even though I'm saying this, I don't. But the original recipe says so! But if you have a sedentary lifestyle or a fat ass like mine, you should use mustard oil and NOT sunflower/ groundnut/ any other white oil. Again, the darker mustard oil helps the colour of the dish and also gives a healthy heaviness to the dish.
4. Don't save on the oil. The oil is what will allow the spices to go inside the mutton as you slowly cook it.
5. This is the heart of getting Kosha Mangsho right. When frying the chopped onion, wait for it to become transparent. Then add a spoon of sugar. The sugar caramelizes, giving the onions a dark hue. This will eventually give you your desired colour at the end!
6. The original recipe does not have tomatoes, so ideally, there's no need to put this. However, I feel that it adds to the intended colour of the dish. Plus I love tomatoes in my meat, so I anyway go ahead and put them in.
7. If you have the time and an unlimited supply of cooking gas (hehe), do not pressure cook the mutton. In fact, if you don't have the time, don't even bother making Kosha Mangsho. It has to be cooked and spooned and cooked and spooned. Love the mutton a little. Make it yours. Ummm. I am a little energy conscious so what I do is that I koshao the mutton until it's almost done. By this time, the mutton is already a nice dark brown in colour. Then, I pressure cook it for 3 whistles just to tenderize the mutton. This is not required at all if you've marinated in papaya.
8. Use Bengali garam masala at the end, 10-15 minutes before you switch off the gas. Bengali garam masala is simpler than the Punjabi version, with only cardamom, cinnamon and cloves being the input ingredients. This again gives the masala a darker colour rather than the popular reddish garam masalas, lending to the colour of the dish.

Yesterday, I cooked Kosha Mangsho (Sunday awesomeness) and it was on the stove for two full hours. If you're at the fag end of your gas cylinder cycle, it is not the time to cook Kosha Mangsho! ;)

Follow these tips and tell me if they worked for you!!!