Topic: New Years Curry Experience (Illustrated)

[ast]

Hi Everyone.

I took advantage of the day off to whip together (Ha!) curry dinners for the family, and, since I've been reading all the info on here, I thought I'd pay lots of attention to what I did as a sort of control case before I start changing things.  All in all, it came out the best so far.  I also made the first home-cooked curry for the little nipper (11 months), so I didn't put any salt in the base sauce.

Some of you may find this interesting, but then again, you may not!   Happy New Year.

First up:  The Curry Base

I'm still using the bog standard KD base with some slight modifications, except today I noticed that her metric/Imperial measures weren't quite equivalent.  Previously, I tended to use whichever seemed the handiest based on what measuring device I had to hand.  For today's control case, I decided to be a tad more scientific...

Instead of the 900g of onions, I always use a 1kg bag.  It's easier to manage, and I don't want to arse around with trying to get exactly 900g of onions out of a 1kg bag.  The main discrepancy I noticed today was that 2 oz is not 50g as Kris says, it's actually nearly 60g.  I always use the balance for this one, and, since my wife is French, it's always set on metric rather than Imperial.  Today, I used 60g of both garlic and ginger and skipped the salt for the little guy's benefit.

At the end of Stage 2, I ended up with approx 2.5L of stock.  I'm not sure how much the standard recipe makes, but this seems pretty-much the same as always for the way I do it.

The Finished Stage 2 Sauce

For Stage 3, I always use a 400g tin of Roma whole, peeled plum tomatoes instead of the 8 oz tin in the recipe.  I haven't seen an 8 oz tin here, and I use the canned plum tomatoes in a few other things I make, so we always have a few around.  For the chicken, I always use a bit more turmeric than she calls for, but otherwise, it's the same.  Today I cooked the meat around 25-30 min.

In paying more attention to what I do so I could write this up, it occurred to me that I always need to reduce the final curry sauce longer than the KD recipe specifies.  I guess this means that I don't reduce it enough at Stage 3.  Next time, I'll use a bit more heat than I normally do to see what happens.

The Finished Stage 3 Sauce and Pre-cooked Chicken

Even with the skimming (which removed about 1/2 cup, I'd guess), I still ended up with about 2.6L of curry base.  This got me to checking the proportions/math in the book again.  Kris says her base is good for 8 servings.  Some of the meat curries call for 425ml of sauce and some specify an equivalent of 3 cups.  Not sure what laws of measurement apply in her kitchen, but the numbers don't add up in mine.

By her calculations that a full batch of Stage 3 base will make 2 of her main dish recipes, this means that the volume of Stage 3 base should be 850ml, or, by her account, about 6 cups or 1.5 pints (assuming Imperial ones here, naturally).  Given my measuring equipment (and from some discussions elsewhere on the forum around this topic), 1 cup = 250ml of liquid.  Technically, a US cup should be 236ml and a UK cup should be 284ml given the 2 cups/pint definition.

This means that 6 "standard" cups of curry base is 1.5L and not the 852ml in 1.5 Imperial pints.  Either way, I still ended up with loads more volume than this, so I simply divided it up so that I used 325ml/serving.  It also made me realize that I was inconsistent in the way I adapted the proportions of the curry recipes too.  In order to make 4 total portions of curry out of one batch of base (since my wife and I don't use the same temperature scales), I should technically divide the ingredients by 4, however, upon reflection, I realized that the best tasting curries I've made used 1/4 of the base sauce, but then used the full amount of ingredients specified for the 3-4 portion recipes.  To confirm this, that's what I did tonight, and it turned out great!

Next Up:  Making the Curries

For the Madras, I used 2 tsp of hot chili powder, and I used 4 heaped tsp for the Vindaloo.  I also used heaped measures of both the garam masala and the ground cumin.  We still don't have any fenugreek in the house, so I leave that out, and I also left out the tomato this time.  As I mentioned before, I quartered the amounts of base and meat, meaning that I had 126g of cooked chicken for myself and the wife and 63g set aside for our son out of the 636g of uncooked weight we started with.  Each of ours used 650ml of base sauce, and I used half that for our son.

Curry Staging Area

I also had originally chopped up a single medium chili (fresh) for my wife, but she decided after a taste test that it was fine without it.  I chopped up 6 medium chilies and 4 hot Thai chilies (red).  That's what is shown in the picture, but I ended up using all the fresh chilies in my Vindaloo.

Final Curry Pans - Madras and Vindaloo (left to right)

Our son's curry omitted the salt and meat and used halved amounts of the rest of the ingredients.  I ended up adding a few pinches of coarse sugar to it, because it tasted a tad bitter without the salt.  I think it's much better with the salt.

For all the curries, I reduced the sauce quite a bit before I called them done.  For mine, I added the fresh chilies at the beginning with the curry base, at the same time as the chili powder, so there would be plenty of time for them to flavor the curry.  I didn't time this part, because I was going mostly by the texture and waiting until it was reasonably thick.  I didn't over do it, because it always thickens a bit when it sits for a few minutes afterwards, but the results came out well.

As I mentioned, I think this part could be avoided if I got the initial base sauce reduced much closer to the end result.  Maybe with some of the "ladle at a time" cooking methods, this doesn't matter quite as much.

The Results:

All that was left was to put it on the plate and dig in.  Both of us were very happy with the results, and think it's the best curry to date.  Next time, I might try some other cooking techniques for the base and/or curries, but at least now I have proper calculations for planning our next curry dinner party.  Next time, it'll be for a lot more people, so I'll need to know what I'm doing.  When there's only 3 or 4, you can fudge a little more on the amounts of base, etc. because you know you should always have enough.  More than four, well, I wasn't sure.

Chicken Madras, New Year's Day 2008

Chicken Vindaloo, New Year's Day 2008

Hardware used:

• 4.4 qt / 4.15L (11"/26cm) Jamie Oliver Anodized, non-stick deep pan (base & curry)
• 11"/26cm Jamie Oliver Anodized, non-stick skillet (curry)
• 2 qt Calphalon pan (rice)

Any feedback or comments on the pictures, methods or observations would be welcome.  I'm really glad I stumbled across this forum.  There's almost no one else I know that bothers to try this sort of thing at home, so it's a great resource to have.

Happy New Year,

Andrew (AST)

P.S. Apologies for the somewhat crap photos.  I had the wrong lens on the camera and could've probably used a different white balance setting, and even with changing the ISO, I didn't get very good results.  They looked much better on the small screen.  I promise to do better next time.

[SnS]

What an excellent post Andrew. Seems you had a great "day off".

Photos are really good (despite the white balance setting - whatever that does )

I havn't read everything in detail yet, but I'm sure there is plenty of interesting stuff there for all of us.

Happy New Year mate  ;D

[Yousef]

Excellent post.
Both curries look accurate although maybe the sauce is a little thick.  Adding water at the cooking stage would sort that out.

Do you feel they were as good as what you would get from a takeaway?

Stew

[extrahotchillie]

A good read and great pictures; Well done.

[Cory Ander]

Hi AST,

Thanks, excellent thread and photos! 

Pre-cooked chicken looks great, base looks great!

Is that curry base in the tall glasses too? 

Your vindaloo looks superb when it's in the pan! 

I seems to have thickened up a bit before you served it though?  Maybe consider adding a little more water or stock to maintain the consistency?

Great post though, thanks mate! 

[Curry King]

Great post and fantastic pictures, thanks for sharing them.  Have you tried any of the base recipes on here yet?

[ast]

Wow.  Thanks for the feedback.  I'll try and answer all the questions.

Re: consistency

Interesting that most of you think the sauce looks too thick.  To me, this is the consistency and texture I expect in my eat in and take away curries.  As I mentioned, I intentionally reduced them to this state by extended cooking at the curry stage because all three were too thin after the recommended times.  It's hard to describe exactly what I look for, but I go for something that will pour off the spoon, but which just does it in a mixture of globs and flowing.  If I'd stopped earlier or added more water, it would have been all flow and no globs, which wouldn't match my expectations from "real" (B)IR fare.

Maybe my expectations aren't the same as yours, and, like I said, the only authentic BIR I ever had was the phal in London I mentioned in my introduction post.  The rest of them have been in the US, Spain, Portugal, Canada, New Zealand and here in Ireland.  The chef I like here came out to see me one time to ask me how my vindaloo was after everyone working in the restaurant had a go at trying to make it hot enough for me.  On more than one occasion (both by him, and at the BIR in London), I was asked if I'd lived in India.  Maybe they were winding me up, because I've never been to India before, and I learned to appreciate IR fare in New Jersey.

Re: as good as a takeaway

Personally, I think it's better than any of the ones that serve the area of South County Dublin where I live.  I've tried just about all of them many times, and many different dishes, and I wasn't happy with them.  That's the main reason I embarked on this journey in the first place.  I think the taste is close, but not the same, to the chef I like in town (Jewel in the Crown on Shelbourne Road, Dublin if you're interested).  The main difference is the "weight" and the "fire".

What I made last night (and finished for lunch today) doesn't feel as heavy as what I get from JITC.  Maybe I didn't use as much oil.  I'll try and add a bit more the next time I make it.  When I eat there, I end up feeling like my stomach gained a couple of pounds for a couple of hours.  Of course, maybe it's the fact that I finish everything (naan, vindaloo and pilau rice) and have a few glasses of water before and after.  I don't generally drink anything while I'm eating, unless it's a just a few sips.  Their portions are a bit larger than I've seen at most other restaurants as well.  You get one of the oval shaped deeper dishes (I'm sure they have a name) with your curry in it and a similar sized flat plate heaped with rice whereas most other places give you the small round bowls.  At home, most of the time I do finish the pan, but I saved a bit from last night to eat today--no idea how much though.  Still, the feeling wasn't quite the same.  Of course, I don't mind that part all that much.  That's one of the reasons I prefer Thai curries to Indian ones is that the Thai ones seem "lighter" to me.  Still, maybe it's all about volume...

The "fire" is also a bit different.  Most of the time at JITC, you can taste both immediate spice on your tongue (I always taste just the curry first) and this is followed by the slow, building heat that comes from "inside".  With mine, I just feel the latter--every time.  I haven't hit on what's different.  I stress "different", because I'm not sure I don't prefer the slower heat more as it really enhances the flavor and experience.  Sometimes, the initial heat can be enough in the restaurant ones to diminish some of the flavors until after you've stopped eating but you still have the flavor in your mouth.  I guess that's one of the reasons that I don't drink too much during or immediately after eating Indian curries.

Re: glassware

Yes, the glasses all contain the finished curry base.  I didn't have enough pans, etc. to measure it all and still cook.  The tall Pilsner glasses are the largest ones I have (except maybe for some crystal wine glasses--which I did consider briefly!), so they were pressed into service this time.  Each one has 650ml of base in them, and the smaller one is a 12 oz "pint" glass (US) that has 325ml in it.  Next time, I might just use them for a measure, since I know how full they should be, but I'm not sure how consistent I am with getting around the same amount of curry base.

What I always do is roughly divide the base into 4 main course dishes and then reduce the end result to the consistency I describe above.  I'm sure it varies quite a bit each time, as this was the only time I ever measured the resulting volumes.  Now that we've decided our son is ready for curries, it will need to be split in 5 so that we can have two rounds of curry from each batch (he gets half a batch for now).  Not sure how that will work next time, as this time we only have enough for 1.5 dishes left.

Re: cr0 bases

I haven't yet tried any of the bases from here as this was the first curry since we got home from the holidays.  I only discovered the site while we were away and was tempted to try a curry for my family in the US.  I do intend to try some of them over the next while, however.  My primary goal with this round was to accurately document where I am now in the hopes that I can recreate it later to see if I'm improving or otherwise use as a control case after I try the new recipes from here.  As I said, I only realized that I didn't consistently do the same thing each time based on the KD recipes when I was trying to make notes.

Having read through a number of the base sauce recipes, I'm not 100% sure which one I'll try next.  The "A GOOD CURRY BASE" from ifindforu (http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,923.0.html) and blade1212's "one pot base - as used by the BIRs" (http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=876.0.html) look interesting as well as Stew's (Admin) "New Base Sauce Recipe" (http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=1894.0).  Even though I normally make basic curries for the family, I want to stay with a base that's as utilitarian as possible.  I also don't want to get hooked on a base that uses carrots, since my mother's allergic to them and I don't want to have to change things when she comes to visit.  Peppers are also probably out, as my wife doesn't do too well with them.  She hardly lets me put them in anything else I make, and then only if they're large enough for her to pick out.  Seems somehow incompatible with the use of a blender...

From a lot of what I've read on here, though, it seems like people feel that any number of "good" bases will do the job, and it comes down more to the technique of actually preparing the final dishes than the base.  From prior cooking experience, unless you start with something which is really bad, most of the time, it's possible to make something turn out nice enough if you are willing to work with it enough and have a taste in mind.  I'm assuming that this applies equally well to curries.

I'm curious how many forum members have really worked through a number of different bases and recipes systematically rather than just trying set combinations.  If so, how long has this taken?  I don't think I could get the family to eat curry more than once every couple of weeks.  Twice a week is the most I ever do it if I'm eating lunch out.  Given the sheer number of base sauce recipes, I think it will take me several months to try them all.  What criteria does everyone use for finding "their" base?

Sorry this got a lot longer than I intended. :-[

Cheers,

ast

[Bobby Bhuna]

Good job! Now I really fancy a Cobra!!!

[Cory Ander]

Wow, thanks for your comprehensive reply AST! 

I actually thought the glasses were TOMATO juice!  But they ARE curry base you say!  ;D

hahahahaha....well, I take my hat off to you then! 

[George]

AST

Excellent write-up. I agree with others - what a good post.

Regards
George