Grandmother's Lamb Recipe

Place the cumin seeds into a dry skillet over medium heat and toast them stirring constantly until they give off a roasted fragrance and turn a darker brown about 1 minute. Scrape the seeds into a bowl and allow to cool. When cool grind them with a mortar and pestle or a clean spice grinder. Set the ground seed aside.

Remove stems of chiles if necessary and soak pods in the apple cider vinegar in a bowl until soft at least 1 hour. Place the softened chiles with vinegar cumin and garlic into a blender or food processor and pulse until ground into a paste 30 seconds to 1 minute or as needed.

Heat the vegetable oil in a large pot over medium heat and cook and stir the onions until lightly browned about 10 minutes. Stir in ginger garlic paste and about 1 teaspoon of the Grandmother's Chile Paste mixture or as desired. Reduce heat to medium-low and fry the onions with the spice pastes for 5 minutes to blend flavors. Stir in tomato paste ground red pepper turmeric cinnamon and cloves and bring to a simmer. Cook to blend flavors about 20 minutes.

Mix in the lamb shank pieces and stir in salt to taste; simmer for 20 minutes and stir in the water. Bring the lamb and sauce to a boil reduce heat to a simmer and simmer until lamb is very tender and sauce has thickened 45 more minutes. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro to serve.