Curry Recipes Online
Curry Base Recipes => Curry Base Chat => Topic started by: Madrasandy on May 02, 2014, 05:00 PM
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Looking forward to making 2 Madras's tonight - 1 with my base, 1 with a restaurant base, I wonder what the difference will be like? The restaurant base smells beautiful (BIR smell), where as my base smells like our bases do. So 2 exactly the same cooked curries but with homemade and restaurant bases. Should be able to get a good idea of how good the madras recipe is and whether or not we need to be challenging the way we make the base to get that extra flavour into into the base. I shall be taking photos and notes throughout and shall post results either later tonight or in morning.
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looking forward to your results
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As am I, gazman, should be intersting
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Really looking forward to what you think
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Looking forward to the results tomorrow too :D
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I can't wait :)
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I have just taken pictures and sampled both bases (cold) . The Restaurant is lighter in colour, stronger in aroma but pretty similar in consistency. The flavours are not too dis-similar , but there is definately a flavour missing. I seem to be getting a cinnnamon/star anise hit in the aroma and slightly in the flavour. Homemade base smells stronger in certain aspects, maybe more oniony or tomatoey , hard too tell.
The wife has just come into the kitchen as I am reheating restaurant base , so I got her to smell then taste the base, she said that there is definately stringy vegetables in there from the texture, and from the taste and smell she said parsnip, maybe swede or turnip, but it has a parsnipy aroma. She said it is definately a vegetable difference between the 2 bases!
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The restaurant base had less spicing, less tomato, far less oil, was a different texture (not as smooth), coriander leaves hadnt had the life boiled out of them, it smelt more vegetabley.
(http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/imagehost/pics/f8c6e81db32bcafdbff43a612516fd95.jpg)
(http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/imagehost/pics/f4260c9002f5be2c337e88149f42610a.jpg)
(http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/imagehost/pics/dde01520d2775405ea2605a1a41a1ab8.jpg)
(http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/imagehost/pics/58753594f0e468d6225ab0ca9bd51bdd.jpg)
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Well after making a madras with the restaurant base and a madras with homemade base, I ate them last night and the results were quite surprising-
Firstly the restaurant base was BIR aroma, less tomato, more balanced spicing and more vegetable tasting
Well both madras's tasted almost identical, you could tell apart, but not by much. The restaurant base produced a less spiced smoother tasting but hotter curry and paler in colour, and it was more moreish. The homemade base was a little richer and not as balanced and left more of an aftertaste.
But the BIR smell had gone from the restaurant base!! Where to?
Is it something they put in the base that they also put in the curry?
I am no closer than when I started, well maybe a little more understanding on the base-more veg, less spicing but how to get that taste ? Not a clue
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Not a clue
me neither
I was sure it was a vegetable, and then I ran out of vegetables to try
It seems almost impossible, that so many people have approached this methodically and intelligently, yet still drawn a blank
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Hmmm, well Im going to the Indian shop this week and am going to buy all the vegetables from there for my next base, whether the indian varieties will make much difference, but I know the restaurants buy from there, so why not
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How confident are you that every curry you cook with the same base has the same taste?
I ask because I get a fair bit of variance in tastes even when using identical base sauces and identical recipes. This is especially true of 'Madras' type curries where there are less additional ingredients added.
It'd be interesting to cook 3 off Madras using the takeaway base and 3 off using your own, just to see if the results are consistant.
We've all heard stories about someone going to a good takeaway and unfortunately it was the head chef's night off, and the resulting curries weren't up to scatch. I assume the second chef is using the same recipe as the head chef.
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I'm still of the opinion, previously discussed in a thread, that any test should be compared in a like for like environment.
ie. the TA is cooked for you. The process of cooking yourself will deaden the sense of smell and taste.
This will interfere with the assessment of any comparison.
Compare each dish, TA and home version, the next day etc or get someone else to cook it for you.
After cooking I struggle to identify the subtle differences between TA and Home.
Mind you, alcohol can play with the senses too: Hic!
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Great thread mate. i have just been reading about Dips base and excluding the chillis it is described as lightly spiced and does have quite a bit of veg in compared to say CA's, which seems to be what you have found, i wonder if this is the key after all?
Ed
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I really think there is something in what fried said. For one thing, it is certain that when the head chef is not there, the stand-in chef certainly uses the same recipe, but the flavour difference is obvious. I've experienced this many times in many different favourite restaurants through the years. Much of the final flavour is clearly in the method.
Also, on a personal level, I switched to the BIR base sauce approach about a year ago, and in that time I have found greater flavour improvement from changing the method as opposed to changing the ingredients. In short on that point, improvements came from frying garlic & ginger in both the base and final curry, frying all spices (other than garam masala), cooking the final curry hot and quick and to the right consistency. That last point took me a while to get right; no book can teach me that, only experience.
Another big leap towards BIR came from the right use of whole spices at the right time, such as brown cardomom in saag and star anise in jalfrezi. Small things, big difference.