Topic: i spoke to my resturant owner last night

[ghanna]

hi,all
i asked him a lot of questions.
yes they re-use the oil ,it give the gravy a nice taste and encourage fermintation of the gravy? specially at night when the temperature of the restaurant goes down and there is no activity.as well they re-use it because they want to save money.
Not the oil it self which help the fermentation ,but the liquids that goes back to the gravy with the oil.
he told me every restaurant and take away is doing this
he thinks that the missing taste that all of us are looking for? is the fermintation which is happening in the gravy? because it is? never referegrated? it is always on the cooker (room temperature).
he told me every chef has his own secret spice formula ,chefs are very secretive about what they use , very expensive to employ, if you are not good with them they will leave you and go and at the end restaurant owners are going to loose ,because customers are getting use to specail taste and ingredients in their curry and if it is not the same every time they ordered they will notice it,and start asking questions,at the end we tell them but in majority of cases we loose this customer.
he told me that curry gravy basic? ingredients are the same in every restaurant and take away
onions ,garlic,ginger,tinned tomato,tomato paste,carrots, sweet red pepper, oil, plain water (no STOCK or MILK )? , salt, then you can choose from the following? (potatoes, chick pea, red lentils,sweet potatoes,? celery, ....etc) these are thickeners and give body to the gravy ).
two ingredients that the restaurant owner don't know is :
SPICE BLEND
HERB BLEND
he told me these make a great difference between a first class gravy and a normal gravy
the chef and only the chef know their ingredients.
i told him all the spices are the same ,he said no? there is VINDALLO ,bhuna,tikka,tandoria, MADRAS ,KORMA .. . etc ,pastes and spice blend in the market are they the same ?not all blends are the same .
i asked him what other ingredients in the gravy? ?tomato ketchup .....yes i notice he puts it .
sugar... yes if the onion taste is a little bitter.
monosodium glutamate? ? ....... i don't know may be the chef is using it,
tamarind puree....yes if the gravy is very sweet because the onion was sweet.
coloring ...... i don't know the chef know
any other secret ingredient? ?.........i don't know but the chef know.
at the end he told me making a gravy is a like any thing else in? cooking you have to taste and adjust ingredients from batch to batch.
do you fry garlic and ginger in the beginning of making the gravy or you add it at the end ?...
one of the chefs that i employed was doing it in the beginning and another one was adding it at the end with the oil? ?....it depend on which chef.

this is all as much as i can remember now.
i hope that i helped
thanks
ghanna

[Yellow Fingers]

Hi ghanna

What do you think the herb mix might be. I can only think of corainder leaf, mint and methi. What else is there?

[ghanna]

hi,yellowfingers
the kitchen staff i bribed (please see who thinks there is a secret ingredients in the curry sauce  by Pete    reply no :24 )  told me  the herbs that he can smell is four CORIANDER , MINT , scared basil, dill.
i made some inquiries and find out that sacred basil is use a lot in THIA cooking it is like normal basil but a little bit stronger.
thanks
ghanna

[Mark J]

Great post Ghanna, thanks.

I strongly believe that the chefs having their own secret spice/herb mixture is not the secret to that taste, reason being there are so many chefs creating the same base (pretty much).

It could be a powerful single ingredient like MSG but I doubt it is something like a simple spice missing, ground fenugreek seeds for example. Because all the BIR's across the country produce pretty much the same curries it has to be down to a common factor, what could this be?

It could be MSG or something similar but I believe it is just in the way they all work e.g. the way they reuse spiced oil over a prolonged time.

[Mark J]

One other point to make which I dont think anyone has considered before - the chef's themselves may not know the secret to that taste!!

Sounds mad but if it is a by product of the way they and the restaurant operates it is entirely possible.


The people who had the gravy demo in brick lane may have had the perfect 100% accurate demo of creating curry base, hiowever becuase it hasnt been used as a BIR would of course it doesnt taste the same.


When I next make a base up I will keep it in my pantry, not freeze it and reuse the spiced oil. Book me an ambulance for 2 weeks time!

[ghanna]

hi, Mark J
may be it is the fermintation in  the gravy
once i tried a gravy without any spices, it was awful, what i want to say is the spices give a
special kind of taste , may be it is the spices may not.
i will keep trying
thanks
ghanna

[Yellow Fingers]

can smell is four CORIANDER , MINT , scared basil, dill.

I think that the use of sacred basil is probably unecessary. It has only been available in the uk in any quantity in the last fifteen years since Thai restaurants have become popular and so the imports have increased. Before that it would have been very hard to obtain, and it is quite expensive even now. Some base sauces have star anise added which has the same aniseed flavour of thai basil and has been available in the UK for a long time because the chinese and indian/pakistani use it.

I'm not sure about the dill because I've never used it. Do you know what its predominant flavour is?

[ghanna]

hi,yellow fingers
this is what he told me ,i don't know
may be it is star anise may be it is sacred basil.
i know that Indians use a lot of dill in their cooking  as an example in DANSHAK ( vegtable ,lentil,meat or chicken curry ) CAMELLIA PANJABI   in her book  50 great curries of India is using it.
they use it in Scottish cured salmon as well .
it is very difficult for me to describe its taste but it is very nice , you can find it at all major super market in the fresh herb shelf.
thanks
ghanna

[Yellow Fingers]

When I next make a base up I will keep it in my pantry, not freeze it and reuse the spiced oil. Book me an ambulance for 2 weeks time!

Don't worry about it Mark. As long as your base is water, vegetables and spices only, it is quite safe to leave it out unrefrigerated for 24 hours or longer even in summertime. Just make sure it is boiled for ten or fifteen minutes on use. Don't risk it if there is any meat or meat juice though.

may be it is the fermintation in the gravy

Yes, definitely. As I posted elsewhere, leave the base sauce to rest for at least a day before use. It won't give that taste we are after but it is one more link in the chain towards that goal!

[Mark J]

Don't worry about it Mark. As long as your base is water, vegetables and spices only, it is quite safe to leave it out unrefrigerated for 24 hours or longer even in summertime.

I was thinking more like 4 weeks  ;D