Curry Recipes Online
Curry Chat => Lets Talk Curry => Topic started by: emin-j on February 16, 2013, 05:00 PM
-
Our local Indian t/a's all seem to turn out OK curries some better than others and my madras can match the best of them 8) BUT when it comes to Onion Bhaji's I just can't get close :( although I have tried many of the recipes on the forum none come close to our t/a's.
I have just been looking through the menu's from a few of our local t/a and all of them listed ' Onion Bhaji's, sliced onion with spices, deep fried in .....Butter ???
I do remember some months ago asking the owner of one of the t/a if it was butter ghee they cooked their bhaji's in and he replied ' no vegetable ghee ' :-\
Does anyone have any experience of deep frying Bhaji's in butter/veg ghee ?
-
Our local Indian t/a's all seem to turn out OK curries some better than others and my madras can match the best of them 8) BUT when it comes to Onion Bhaji's I just can't get close :( although I have tried many of the recipes on the forum none come close to our t/a's.
I have just been looking through the menu's from a few of our local t/a and all of them listed ' Onion Bhaji's, sliced onion with spices, deep fried in .....Butter ???
I think we've been here before : "butter" is a mis-hearing of "batter" ("a"/"u" are very close or even indistinguishable in some languages). The Taj of Kent makes the same errors in the reverse direction : "Staff Kazana (http://www.tajofkent.co.uk/menu.htm)" instead of "Stuffed Kazana".
** Phil.
-
Hi Emin,
What style of bhaji are they making flat or round? I assume that if they are using ghee of any type, then they are likely shallow frying a flat bhaji. It's highly unlikely they deep fry in ghee, though I accept it is possible.
Edit: reading back, I think Phil's explanation is the likely culprit.
-
Thanks' Guys,
They are the round Bhaji's near tennis ball size Axe.
Phil your idea is a possibility but find it hard to believe the first three menu's I looked at all say Butter :-\,I could email them I suppose ;)
-
A certain Mr Emin-J wrote this in May 2011 :
As an update to this thread just took delivery of this evenings Curry and it was the Boss of the T/A doing the delivery,I asked if they really deep fried their Bhaji's in Butter ? and chriswg was right ;) they deep fry Bhaji's in Veg Ghee, I'm definitely going to try this but not sure how long Veg Ghee would last in a Deep Fat fryer out of the Fridge :-\
This (http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,5800) is the thread where we discussed all these hypotheses before ...
** Phil.
-
A certain Mr Emin-J wrote this in May 2011 :
As an update to this thread just took delivery of this evenings Curry and it was the Boss of the T/A doing the delivery,I asked if they really deep fried their Bhaji's in Butter ? and chriswg was right ;) they deep fry Bhaji's in Veg Ghee, I'm definitely going to try this but not sure how long Veg Ghee would last in a Deep Fat fryer out of the Fridge :-\
This (http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,5800) is the thread where we discussed all these hypotheses before ...
** Phil.
Never did try it Phil just didn't fancy cooking in all that veg ghee :P but as the menu's say Butter could it be butter Ghee ? The boss of the t/a I spoke to speaks better English than I do ( not difficult ::) and he did say veg ghee but if that is the case i'll have to give that a miss.
-
but as the menu's say Butter could it be butter Ghee ?
I really think not. Butter/batter, Staff[ed]/stuffed, Garabi/gravy and so on are not only possible but (IMHO) quite likely confusions, given that the two scripts involved are completely unrelated and the staff are probably guided by the pronunciation as they hear it to inform their spelling rather than consulting a dictionary each time they are uncertain. I know I have mentioned this before, but it is pertinent and does bear repeating : a Catalan speaker cannot hear any difference between "Ben" and "Venn" unless he/or she is either a trained linguist or has had considerably exposure to languages (such as English) in which b/v form a minimal pair. I am reasonably certain (but would have to do some more research before I could assert this as a fact) that in at least some of the Indic languages, both b/v and a/u do not form minimal pairs.
** Phil.
-
Thanks' Phil / Axe ;)
-
I was going to add, that, veg ghee is a solid at room temperature which means if it were in a commercial fryer, they would need expensive cleaning equipment to filter the fat when it's in a liquid state i.e. hot. A customer/friend of mine has a chain of chippies that cook in dripping, this too is a solid at room temp. Seeing the trouble they have to go to to filter and clean the fat I really can't see the BIR/TA doing this.
-
I am reasonably certain (but would have to do some more research before I could assert this as a fact) that in at least some of the Indic languages, a/u similarly do not form a minimal pair.
Yes, if you look at the Wikipaedia page for Bengali phonology, you will see that the BUT vowel does not occur. Thus a Bengali speaker, on hearing the BUT vowel in English, will (unless linguistically trained) automatically map it to the nearest vowel sound that does occur in Bengali, which is the BACK vowel (/
-
I am reasonably certain (but would have to do some more research before I could assert this as a fact) that in at least some of the Indic languages, a/u similarly do not form a minimal pair.
Yes, if you look at the Wikipaedia page for Bengali phonology, you will see that the BUT vowel does not occur. Thus a Bengali speaker, on hearing the BUT vowel in English, will (unless linguistically trained) automatically map it to the nearest vowel sound that does occur in Bengali, which is the BACK vowel (/
-
..failing that, he could just ask the guy next time he's in
Yes, he could. But if the guy is a native Bengali speaker, the dialogue could well go like this:
Emin-J : "Excuse me, are your onion bhajis made of onions and spices fried in batter ?"
Bengali guy : "Yes sir".
Emin-J : "OK, thank you. And could I ask : do you fry them in butter ?"
Bengali guy : "Yes sir, I just said that -- onions and spices fried in batter".
Emin-J. "Ah ..."
Because, unless the Bengali guy has a particularly sensitive ear, or is 2nd-generation and therefore has English as his first language, he may simply be unable to hear the difference between "batter" and "butter", just as I cannot hear the difference between (say) "d?ngx?" and "d?ngxi" in Mandarin Chinese.
** Phil.
-
It's hard to believe somebody put all that stuff on a curry forum.
???
-
I had a similar conversation some time ago when I asked the boss of our closest t/a if he used food colouring in his base gravy to get such a vivid orange colour, he said firmly '' No,we use tamarind for colour we use no food colouring '' I asked if the tamarind was in powder form and he said '' I will show you'' he returned from the kitchen with the container off the chef's rack which was full of .........turmeric ::) '' Ah ! Turmeric '' I said '' Yes Tamarind '' he said ::) ;) :)