Topic: Curryhell's Little India Mushroom Bhaji

[curryhell]

This is how i made my two mushroom bhajis over the weekend.  The ingredients quantities and timing are approximate and based on the footage contained in CBM's Little India Part One video here:

http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=8196.msg72859#msg72859 

All credit for the dish must go to Little India and to Mick for getting behind the scenes and filming it. 
In the absence of garlic infused oil I used ordinary and fried half tsp of garlic puree to substitute. 
I believe the secret to this dish is to just cook the mushrooms.  Added flavour comes from their juices and combines with the other ingredients.  If over cooked the dish can become slimey in texture (but still very tasty  )

Mix powder used was Zaal's
Base used was C2G bangladeshi as per Julian's e-book

Ingredients in order of use:

3/4 chef spoon of oil
half tsp garlic puree
chef's spoon of pre-cooked onions
one heaped tsp pre-diluted tomato paste (mine is diluted 1 part paste to two parts water)
pinch of salt
rounded tsp of mix powder
good pinch of dried fenugreek leaves
2 chef's spoon curry gravy
150 grams of sliced mushrooms
tablespoon of chopped fresh coriander

Method:

heat pan on medium high heat for 30 sceonds
add oil and heat for about 30 seconds
add garlic puree and stir fry until the sizzling subsides
add pre-fried onions, tomato paste, salt, mixed powder and dried fenugreek leaves and one chef's spoon of
curry gravy
mix well and cook for a couple of minutes on med high
add approx 150 grams of sliced mushroom and mix well and add a good pinch of coriander
let fry on high for about a  minute
add a further half a chef's spoon of curry gravy and stir in
fry for a minute then reduce the heat and continue to cook until the mushrooms are just cooked
add the remaining half chef's spoon of curry gravy and stir in
cook for a further half minute and remove from heat
garnish with remaining coriander
leave to stand for a couple of minutes before serving

MUSHROOM BHAJI


GARLIC MUSHROOMS



I hope my interpretation of the video does the dish justice.  I was very pleased with my efforts.  Enjoy and let me know if any of you try it 

EDIT - for the garlic lovers  ;D :
For those wanting to make Garlic mushrooms:

• at the stage of adding the garlic puree substitute this with 2- 3 cloves of slice garlic.  Fry this until it takes on colour and the rawness is cooked out
• when adding the final half chef's spoon of base gravy add the garlic puree substitued earlier

And for those that like their garlic mushrooms madras strength, add 1/4 - 1/2 chilli powder with the mix powder 

[h4ppy-chris]

I will be definitely trying this, thanks for taking the time to put this up :-)

[Salvador Dhali]

That looks superb, and yep - I will definitely be trying it this weekend, and will report back.

This is one of those BIR dishes that can either turn out sublime, or just the wrong side of 'not quite right', and as CH so rightly points out, it's all down to the correct cooking of the mushrooms.

Treat them with respect!

[Stephen Lindsay]

nice one CH I won't be able to make it this weekend as I am going to Hard Rock Hell in Wales but will seek it out when I return on MOnday!

[Naga]

Thanks for putting this recipe up, CH. Looks good enough for breakfast right now!

[Peripatetic Phil]

nice one CH I won't be able to make it this weekend as I am going to Hard Rock Hell in Wales but will seek it out when I return on MOnday!

Is "Hard Rock Hell" (a) rock climbing, (b) self-inflicted deafness, or (c) something else ?
** Phil.

[beachbum]

Maybe breaking a tooth on a stick of Llandudno rock?

Supermarket round the corner has mushrooms again for AUD 7 a kilo, I'm going to scale the recipe up to 450g and I'll post results.

Edit: in the instructions I only seem to find a total of 2 chefs spoons of gravy, I'll use the 3 (scaled up to my recipe) anyway.

Puzzled by the heaped tsps of prediluted puree. If prediluted then it won't "heap" - I'll assume heaped then diluted. 

I'm also going to put in some extra kashmiri chilli with the dry mix as I likes it 'ot.

[beachbum]

Wow that was quick  ;D



My dry mix is basically Julian's from the video, using a local curry powder "Clive of India" which is pretty good, and the base is also Julian's quick one with the fried onions. I retained the oil from the fried onions, made it up the required no. of chef spoons and used that. The final dish has a beautiful sweetness that I guess comes from the onions.

I resisted the temptation to do my usual frying of the Jeera seeds etc and just stuck to the recipe. I had a momentary panic about the mushrooms maybe sticking and burning but I've had a lot of experience with mushrooms and realised they would shortly "sweat" and exude a lovverly juice that would start to thin the mixture.



I did the garlic version plus some Kashmiri Chilli powder, so medium hot.

This is fantastic, I was going to have it as a mere side dish to some Beef Madras, but guess what ..... Thanks a million, CH and LI.

 ;D haha



PS: in fact I ended up with base left over as I realised it would make it far too "saucy" if i used more than the quantity in the directions, so I'm wondering if the ingredients list could be out a bit on the gravy.

[curryhell]

Wow, that was quick ;D I didn't have chance to reply before you were reporting back on the finished result  :

Edit: in the instructions I only seem to find a total of 2 chefs spoons of gravy, I'll use the 3 (scaled up to my recipe) anyway.

There has been much discussion on scaling dishes upwards and whether it is as simple as increasing the ingredients in a linear fashion.  I think your comments on the gravy quantity used show that with mushrooms, less is better on the gravy front: 

Puzzled by the heaped tsps of prediluted puree. If prediluted then it won't "heap" - I'll assume heaped then diluted. 

Although diluted at a ratio of 1:2 my paste "heaped" on the tsp, but obviously not like the undiluted paste or a spice would.  Maybe in this instance "rounded" would have been a more accurate choice of words

I'm also going to put in some extra kashmiri chilli with the dry mix as I likes it 'ot.

Go for it  ;D ;D

Curry porn for breakfast  .    One observation is that your sauce looks fairly thick.  Maybe this is down to Julian's improvised base or possibly it needs watering down a bit more?  Your dish does look like many i've seen from a TA.  My mouth is watering
Thanks for trying it out and the detailed feedback. All credit to LI and CBM.  All i did was interpret (correctly or incorrectly  ) the video content and post it.

[haldi]

Base used was C2G bangladeshi as per Julian's e-book

What do you reckon to this base?
I made it last week
It's very gingery
I used the pressure cooker for some of the recipe (as instructed)
I got a lot of compliments about the paneer bhajee I made with it
I couldn't tell if it was good, I'd been cooking all afternoon
My taste buds were gone by then
I froze some base and I'll use it again, to see what I think

I wasn't too sure about Julian's recipes, but I reckon he was right about a lot of things
The onions really need to be cooked a long time in the gravy
The flavour does change
The aroma does go vinegary

I was in a takeaway kitchen last Tuesday
On all the cooked curries, the pan is left just sitting on the heat without stirring for maybe three miniutes
This would be the roasting technique he talked of

I don't know about his idea of using very little water in the base gravy
But it certainly does no harm
And it's also amazing how much water comes out from the onions
It was half a cup of water in Julian's pressure cooker base
I thought it would burn
But it didn't even catch

Let's face it, if he wasn't any good , then his place would have shut in a month
Well, I guess it is closing
But not for that reason
Someone on this site could probably buy it
6,500 pounds ,I think
And I did think about it, too
I wouldn't want that as a job
The novelty would be gone in two days