Mete Kosha
Spicy braised liver curry
- Cooking time60 mins
Calories357kcal
This is a spicy liver "kosha"—a style of cooking where the meat is slowly braised, leaving a thick sauce in the end that coats the meat (liver in this case).
This recipe can be cooked with any liver—red meat or poultry—but with poultry scale down the quantities of spices, and onion-ginger-garlic by about 20%. The cooking time for chicken/duck liver will also be lower.
What sets this "mete" or liver kosha apart from a Bengali "mete chochchori" is the absence of potatoes, and the addition of roasted cumin–coriander powder. Here, the mustard oil is not heated to smoking in order to preserve the pungent mustardy flavours of the oil in the dish. It really lends this liver curry a distinct flavour.
This is commonly served with plain boiled rice, but the leftovers can also be enjoyed with rooti.
Books in this recipe
Ingredients
For bhaja dhone–jeere
- 20 g coriander seeds
- 20 g cumin seeds
For cooking
- 85 g mustard oil
- 175 g onions
- 2 bay leaves
- 3 pcs cinnamon
- 8 cloves
- 45 g ginger paste
- 35 g garlic paste
- 500 g liver (4-cm cubes)
- 13 g salt
- 2 g (1 tsp) turmeric
- 1 g (½ tsp) red chilli powder
- 4 g (2 tsp) bhaja dhone–jeere powder
- 6 pcs cardamom (freshly powdered)
- 275 ml hot water
Method
- Chop the liver in large, 4-cm cubes. Wash well and set to drain over a sieve.
- Finely slice the onions. Make a paste with the ginger and garlic.
- Make bhaja dhone–jeere powder: For that, heat a small skillet on medium flame and add the coriander seeds. Dry-roast them until toasted and fragrant, about 3 mins or so. Add the cumin seeds and continue toasting them for a couple of minutes. Transfer these to a grinder jar and blitz to a powder. This spice mix can be stored in an airtight container. For this recipe, we will need only 4 g.
- Heat mustard oil. Add the sliced onions and fry on high heat until they turn golden.
- Add the whole spices: bay leaves, cinnamon and cloves. Continue frying until the onions turn brown and crisp.
- Add the ginger and garlic paste. Fry for a couple of minutes and add the liver.
- Add the entire amount of salt, as it will enable the liver to be well-seasoned throughout.
- Stir and fry on medium heat for about 4 minutes.
- Now add the powdered spices: turmeric, red chilli powder and bhaja dhone–jeere powder.
- Braise on low heat, adding splashes of water when needed, until the raw smell of the spices goes away, and oil releases from the spices.
- At this point, powder some cardamom pods in a mortar–pestle and add them to the pan.
- Cook for just a couple of minutes more before adding water for the sauce.
- Cover the pan and simmer on low heat until the liver is cooked though, and the sauce is of the desired consistency.
- Serve with plain rice or rooti.
