Curry Recipes Online
Curry Chat => Lets Talk Curry => Topic started by: JerryM on January 11, 2009, 10:45 AM
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Does anyone have any plans for the coming year in terms of their indian cooking be it something new to try or changes to existing practise.
i've been trying to take stock (post ashoka). My previous intention of trying to extend the range of main dishes now being redundant.
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JerryM, I have also found a kind of pregnant pause since The Ashoka stuff. For me being from Glasgow my regional taste and smell is now complete. That said my hope for the year ahead is to be able to get the other base sauces from them, check the recipes we have from them, get some more them and then experiment to create a full menu.
I get a big kick out of being able to amaze friends with complete dinner parties of totally home cooked dishes and all the trimmings. So my ideal would be being able to email folks a varied and extensive menu ahead of a party and for them to pre order.
Already I have more than enough throughout the site from amazing Pilou Rice,Starters,Nans,Chapatis,Main Dishes,etc,etc.
I can only see things getting better because so many of the guys on this site old and new can contribute to my repertoire and experience.
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Panpot,
very much look fwd to further Ashoka exploits it's been a real journey for us all.
the kit is a real must for me and the recipe results totally aligned with my regional taste buds. (on an aside i've not yet tried your onion paste as i had plenty of the original to use up. the bhuna karahi is to die for).
the ashoka has for me put the cat among the pigeons and i have a few ideas on where i intend to go but felt i'd could do with "others" thoughts for a sanity check - hence the post.
best wishes
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Cool, hope others reply too
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My plan for the next year is to try and solve this problem:
1. I LOVE curry
2. The mere sniff of a curry and I put 1kg in weight
So my goal is to produce BIR style curries that have lowest amount of fat and sugar but don't compromise too much on the taste.
This is not going to be easy ;D
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So my goal is to produce BIR style curries that have lowest amount of fat and sugar but don't compromise too much on the taste.
Hahaha, mine, once again, is to produce a good BIR quality Madras!
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Currymonster,
weight was not on my radar. i suppose i would go into the, "health conscious" category of which weight is certainly a member. on the positive side we do have the advantage in cooking ourselves of knowing exactly what goes in. on the downside above this i see health savings are better and more easily achived elsewhere in our eating habits.
like u we all love curry though and that put's us all out of the "with moderation" camp in this category for sure.
i'm sort of happy on the oil (my aim is to avoid sat fat and cholesterol), i use very little sugar (don't need to regularly use it in SR naan for example). Salt is probably the biggie for me but having experimented with the amount for me u can't get BIR without it.
the resolution is well worth keeping in the back of our minds though. it does need a health warning in itself though - i got pally with a TA chef some time ago and against his better judgement he regularly made a "low fat equivalent" dish. it tasted pretty good and probably close enough depending on your needs. for me i'd missed the fact that there was way more heath damage in the naan due to the butter and egg.
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I would definitely also be in the 'health conscious' category as I also think about the content of all of the food that I eat. I have cooked many traditional Indian dishes with the minimum amount of fat, sugar, salt, etc. with success IMHO, if I can acheive my goal of cooking 'reasonably healthy' BIR style food I could eat it every day... heaven ;D ;D ;D
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Alas, my goal remains the same - to produce curries that TRULY have the depth of flavour, savouriness and smell, typical of those produced by decent BIRs, rather than simply nice, tasty, curries.
I will continue to pursue the combination of ingredients (mainly in the base) and techniques (what are these?) required to achieve this accordingly. So far, none do.
My focus will remain on the base (where I still believe "the secret" lies) and any other additional ingredients (e.g. spicy oil, stock) that may be required to achieve my goal.
Based on Haldi's recent comments, I will be trying to replicate the spicy oil, which is undoubtedly produced naturally in BIRs in the course of their daily activities, perhaps to also use in preparing the base. It seems to me that, although I've found that onion paste produces no discernible difference in my curries, it may indicate a means (i.e. fried onions, garlic, spices, etc) by which to produce spicy oil for cooking with.
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I'm totally where CA is with this curry making malarkey, so my resolution is to try not to let the sheer misery I feel at not being able to get what I want get me down too much this year! :'(
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Hahaha, mine, once again, is to produce a good BIR quality Madras!
I hope u finally achieve this one. Hopefully on Panpots next visit to the Ashoka it may give us more clues. Seeing your other post (to do with the missing chilli taste) it occurred to me that making a "madras hot" vindaloo might get closer than just a pure madras recipe. i've thought about doing this myself (vindaloo hot is too hot for me as i don't eat curry every other day which u need to master the hotness). i'm going to add it to my list.
on high note my fav restaurant messed up on it's madras on my last visit. i did not want to raise the matter with them but it reconfirmed to me there is quite a variation in what's termed madras and thefor many things to many people.
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CA/Secret Santa,
thanks for sharing your thoughts. CA - i will certainly keep your thoughts in mind if i'm right in summarising it as being able to cook as good as a BIR chef (a good one) - that's certainly my goal. SS as always u put it in a way that i just can't help having a smile.
I feel i'm pretty much there on my intent:
1) Reduce No off Bases in use - I currently make 5 off bases on a regular basis - i'd like to get this down to 1 or 2 at the most (Rajver, Saffron, adapted CR02, Ifindforu, Ashoka). I'd also like to revisit IvanGough's AIR. The intent being to side by side compare and evaluate the effect of the best bits from each.
2) Yellow v Red Curry Base Oil - It appears some BIR's make a base that produces yellow oil whilst others produce red. My gut feeling is that red produces better curries. i'd like to confirm or otherwise.
3) Marge - The marge effect was interesting. I want to explore this more to understand it better.
4) Spice Mix v Garam Masala at frying stage - I've been taken aback by how good the East End Garam tastes compared to what i've made/fine tuned at home over many trial and error attempts. Probably a critical part of BIR - who knows - i just feel i need to experiment a bit.
5) Burner Size - I use my 2.5kw stove now on full wack without burning. I note that new hobs typically include "wok burners" at typ ~4.5kw. I've just swapped my electric hob for gas which just needs connecting. It will deliver 3.0kw. I still intend getting (or drilling out the existing) a bigger jet for the stove to get to ~8kw. It niggles me that my local BIR does use at lot of heat initially and i'm just not necessarily convinced it's for speed of orders as i feel i could keep up on the 2.5kw.
Looks like a busy year ahead.
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i've revisited the rajver base.
i was looking to see what if any effects; green pepper, tomato and relatively complex spicing in a base have on the final curry. the intent being to cherry pick good "essential" features to adopt in a "std" base.
for the last few months i've been using an adapted version of the CRO2 development base. it contains simple veg and simply spicing and it is this that i was comparing the rajver against in terms of the finished curry.
i now don't believe green pepper has a significant effect and is down to personal preference. the tomato does affect the amount of tom puree needed at cooking stage. it's not essential to include in a base.
it's too early to say on spicing but i felt i needed to scale back the spicing at cooking stage to compensate for the relatively "high" spicing in the rajver base. i'm leaning towards simple spicing as the best approach. i need to make a few other Bases to be sure.
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it's been a real interesting yr.
at this time last yr i'd well exceeded my expectations - to make a decent curry for midweek to avoid suffering mash and gravy.
i now realise this curry malarkey is a bit like fell walking - what appears to be the last peak is until u get there.
i'm sorted on my last yrs (09) top 5. anyone for starting a new post for o'10.
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Greetings ,
Like CA I believe ' progress ' is to be made in the Base Sauce and also feel we have all the answers staring us in the face already on the forum so my intention is to look more closely into the world of base.
Keep it simple - I can only speak on my own findings and having watched two BIR Chef's in their T/A plus a 5 Star Traditional Indian Chef in a top class Restaurant all make fantastic tasting food - none used Onion Paste or Spiced Oil in the final Curry only using the same range of Spice powders as we all use on the forum other than the 5 Star Chef used fresh roasted whole Spices which they prepare ' on site ' and unless I find a base which requires any of the above ingredients I wont be concentrating my efforts on the Oil/Paste as I do not believe they are necessary for the BIR taste.
Fresh Spices .
A previous forum member commented on how much better his Curry tasted using a fresh batch of Spice so having had a Pestle and Mortar set bought me for Xmas I will be trying my own ground Spices and see what the difference is . When you think about how much Spice a BIR Chef would get through they probably use much fresher Spices than my ' been in the cupboard for weeks ' Jobie's.
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As I said to Jerry off list these are the dishes I would like to get to the exquisite level:
Chicken Korma.
Chicken Saagwala.
Bombay Potato.
Makhini Murg. (Butter Chicken).
Onion Kulcha Naan.
Lamb Vindaloo.
Chicken Madras.
My personal jury is out on only one really (Vindaloo) and thats only because a few restaurants do this with an ingredient I am not using at present. The rest fall pretty much in line. At least I'm happy with them.
More traditional cooking other than that really. Neat thread. :)
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a bit like fell walking
I did a bit of that this week. Hic! ;D
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Secret Santa,
sounds a tad like festive fell walking 8)
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been a wonderfull few months for me on here, came here a complete novice with just a jar of mixed herbs in the cupboard. I have taking on making on curries with a huge enthusism due to all the people here.
Now ive learned a huge amount, even made a few really decent curries, spent a fortune on the initial spice store and auxillary items and even got me stainless balti dishes and a spice grinder.
But by this time next year i want to be able to achieve a great chicken tikka starter. if i get this right then the year after i want to truly perfect my curries, then i have a full 2 course meal to suprise any friends or relatives that come around.
i cant thank you all enough for your help and chat this year on my curry quest. many thx
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your quite welcome jimmy and keep us posted along your way
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been mulling mine over - not that easy
i can't even think of a question i'd ask a chef.
spice is i think my main interest.
the use of garam by the ashoka was intially a real surprise. when u taste the east end brand though it's not that different to curry powder - it's not garam as i know it (from KD1). i've also swapped the east end garam for spice mix and get similar result
the malik's seem to use individual spice although it's easy to be mistaken relying on the video and they seem to dollop them in http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=3013.0 (http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=3013.0). it could be that which at the time was thought to be curry powder (bin 5 on the photo) is in fact mix powder (probably containing curry powder).
my local TA use mix powder but they won't talk about it full stop.
i'm thinking of using Mikka's spice mix http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=4033.10 (http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=4033.10) as the starting point and then changing 1 off spice significantly to compare side by side with the std mix. i'll probably add curry powder in as a variable too.
i guess i'm trying to fathom whether additional individual spice are added to a std mix powder to give variation for the various dishes. which is what i think malik's suggests.
after that the only thing on my mind is to get somewhere close to a decent sylheti and bahar. i'm hopeful to get going on the KD2 book too.
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I think mine has to be perfecting the bhuna which has always been my favourite dish along with bombay aloo.
Then there's the madras, the chicken chilli masala, the jalfeizi, the garlic chilli chicken, the chicken nepal, the chicken tikka masala, the rogan josh, the dansak, the nawabi........................ I could go on, going to be another busy year :)