Curry Recipes Online
Curry Chat => Lets Talk Curry => Topic started by: Ian S. on January 11, 2012, 10:52 PM
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That's what The Fabulous Baker Brothers told me on Channel 4 this evening, so it must be true. I didn't see the whole programme, but I was channel surfing and caught sight of a a couple of guys in a BIR kitchen so I naturally paused with interest.
"You can't cook restaurant curries at home, and here's why", one of them said.
1: You don't have a Tandoor at home. No, really, you don't. Indian restaurants use a Tandoor. And you don't have one. Apparently.
2: The dishes are cooked in a special blend of spices.
3: Each dish is cooked in a special sauce.
Phew! That's a relief. If only the Fabulous Baker Brothers had been around back in 2005 when I joined this site. They could have saved me an awful lot of time and effort.
However, all is not lost. Apparently you can make a nice curry if you use something called 'Garam Masala', and add your own choice of spices as you see fit. And coriander. Plus, I know someone who can give you a good price per kilo for your aluminium curry pans, so it's not all bad.
They then went on to cook a fish curry, but I switched over because I didn't want to miss the start of Celebrity Big Brother - not now that I know I can't cook restaurant curries at home.
The programme isn't yet available on 4OD as I type, but when it is, it'll be here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-fabulous-baker-brothers/episode-guide/series-1/episode-2 (http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-fabulous-baker-brothers/episode-guide/series-1/episode-2)
Call me optimistic, but I think I'll wait until I see the whole prog before I bin the contents of my spice cupboard. They might have a recipe for Spicy Baked Loaf, or something.
;D
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I think No. 2 was actually 'A secret Marinade'?
Their (the Baker Brothers') Fish curry looked pretty dire, talk about crunchy onions :|
Gary
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Haha - yes, a 'secret marinade' - that was it. Was there anything in the restaurant footage that I missed before I tuned in?
I'm usually quite good at spotting cookery programmes that feature BIR in the schedules, but this one slipped under the radar.
Oh, and hi, everyone. I've been meaning to post again here for a while now, just to say I still read the forum every day, and have learned a lot from it over the years, and thanks. Couldn't really think of anything else to say - until the Fabulous Baker Brothers tried to put me straight!
Thought it might give you a chuckle. :)
Ian
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As a chef, cooking Indian dishes both at home and in the restaurant; I have not seen any difference in regards to the taste. The difference is you have to try harder when at home as things are not set as they are in the restaurant kitchen. There are dishes you can cook which you do not have to put in the tandoor; chicken tikka; and tandoori chicken.
When I had worked at a restaurant in the beginning of 80s, the restaurants which did not have tandoor, had grills which they used instead.
I do not totally agree with their statement :-\, I will be interested to watch the programme and then comment further.
Abdul
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Hi Ian,
I actually heard the programme being advertised on local radio (Key 103 Manchester) and thought I'd V+ it. Wished I had now, especially now they have put us all straight. I only wished that I hadn't started to knock up a batch of base gravy, seeing as though the BIR's cook their curries with a "special" sauce :o
And welcome back ;D
Ray :)
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As a chef, cooking Indian dishes both at home and in the restaurant; I have not seen any difference in regards to the taste.
Abdul, I am going to treasure this statement of yours :)
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Could we see the Fabulous Baker Brothers
'secret fabulous marinade' in Tescos soon ?
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Haha - yes, a 'secret marinade' - that was it. Was there anything in the restaurant footage that I missed before I tuned in?
I'm usually quite good at spotting cookery programmes that feature BIR in the schedules, but this one slipped under the radar.
Oh, and hi, everyone. I've been meaning to post again here for a while now, just to say I still read the forum every day, and have learned a lot from it over the years, and thanks. Couldn't really think of anything else to say - until the Fabulous Baker Brothers tried to put me straight!
Thought it might give you a chuckle. :)
Ian
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Hi Ian, check Wed 10th Jan BBC One Show, where a restauranteur claimed it was his belief that western cooks cannot replicate dishes cooked by asian chefs , citing nothing more than cultural reasons rather than cooking skills. In typical prime time tv format, they conducted a blind taste test by the restauranteur(pretty young looking & maybe not the best person to judge the food), by pitching a(22 year old) Asian chef against a (22 year old)young female college student, who we were told, had only cooked the dish twice before(sorry 2 x days exp). He picked the chef's dish as his preferred choice, although crediting the students effort as very good. Of note, the pro's dish was far more oily than her's, I'm also reluctant to use too much oil/fat/sugar/salt in my cooking, but I'm trying to change! : )
The point of the feature ,was to highlight situation faced by the immigration legislation changes, which it's claimed are providing a shortage of labour in a large industry. It's no coincidence that large organisations such as Ashoka Group, who would be well placed to be tipped off about the legislation change, have positioned themselves in the new altered market, which is probably funded partly or in whole by the taxpayer
Personally I was trying to see inside the pans : )
Regards
ELW
PS. The Fabulous Baker Brothers ... what next?
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Hi ELW
Thanks for the heads-up on The One Show (Tuesday 10th). I watched it this morning on iPlayer - it's still available for a week or so, if anyone else is interested. What a great little film. I seem to remember a similar crisis many years ago, with an appeal for students to come forward to learn BIR cooking due to a shortage of Asian chefs in the country. I can't remember the name of the catering college offering places at the time, but there was an item on Breakfast TV about it. I remember wishing I was a college student, anyway.
Paul Bettany's enthusiasm for Aktar's venison dish in the studio afterwards reduced me to tears of laughter. Nice to hear Aktar say that, of course, it's perfectly possible for anyone to cook Indian Restaurant food given 'Time and passion'. But we know this. :)
PS. The Fabulous Baker Brothers ... what next?
'The Fabulous Bhuna Brothers' - I'd watch that! ;D
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Caught a bit of the Baker boys the other week, they look like the Kray twins of Candleford :) I'll check this one out...still on the topic of chancers, Jamie Oliver was in a bir kitchen on Jamie's Britain recently, & showed us a "classic" curry house dish being made.......stuffed peppers or aubergines! >:( ...in the background a real chef was checking what looked like a gravy in progress with his ladle ::)
Trade secrets are seldom revealed to the masses on tv...it's taboo ;)
Regards
ELW
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Yeah, I watched the Baker Boys this morning - I wouldn't bother if I were you. There was a scene about a minute long in the restaurant, then straight into their own fish curry sketch. Which, to be fair, didn't look bad, for what it was.
Thinking about posting here again made me revisit how I got into trying to cook restaurant curries at home. It was about 15 years ago. There was a series of programmes on TV where they challenged good home cooks to go into restaurants and run service using their own recipes for an evening. Does anyone remember that?
One programme was set in an Indian restaurant, and a couple of women went in with their home-style curry recipes and redesigned the menu for the night. They had the regular kitchen staff at their disposal. The main problems were getting the dishes out on time, and the fact that most customers wanted the traditional '8 pints of lager and a vindaloo' experience.
I remember the narrator saying something like: "Indian restaurants use an onion and tomato gravy, from which they can prepare many dishes quickly by adding different spices". That was news to me at the time, so I scuttled off into my kitchen and tried to put together a gravy with onions and tomatoes and then cook a curry from it. I had no idea about purees or blenders or anything like that. Needless to say it was awful.
Then my partner gave me an old clipping from an early 80's Curry Club magazine, which claimed to spill the beans on the restaurant curry secret. It was long before Bruce Edwards, and I've long since lost the clipping, but it basically involved boiling a couple of onions in oil and water for an hour or two, adding some milk and then pounding the contents of the pan to mush using a potato masher. Then you added curry powder and roast chicken pieces and heated it up.
I served it to my partner. She said: "Looks like curry. Smells like curry. Tastes like sh*t". And that was the end of that.
Then a friend recommended Pat Chapman's New Curry Bible, so I worked my way through that for a while. Low points consisted of flushing a finished dish down the loo, and one spectacular row with my partner which started with her saying "Why are they always so claggy and brown?" after I'd slaved away in the kitchen for the umpteenth attempt. But I still use his curry masala mix from time to time.
Undeterred, I discovered the KD1 book, and met with some success, once I started discarding the finished recipes and just used the base gravy with my own tweaking for the individual dishes. And just after that would have been about the time I joined CR0. :)
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And just after that would have been about the time I joined CR0. :)
And the rest, as they say, is history :)
Ray :)
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I watched this programme too and also thought what a load of bo!!0cks, a kitchens a kitchen and its a lot easier to say its unachievable at home rather than describe making a base and cooking a decent curry or pretty much repeating the contents of this forum
hehe :)
Wayne
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Ian, sounds like you served a harsh apprenticeship on your curry odyssey. How are your curries now - are you satisfied or still in search of perfection?
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Hi, Natterjak :)
Would it be a cop-out to say, 'Both'?
I'm satisfied that I can knock out a good, tasty, authentic BIR-style curry which is better than most of the takeaways I've had locally over the past couple of years, and fairly consistently too. But like others whose posts I've read here during my lurkage, I'm still searching for that final 5% 'wow' factor.
I just don't let it get to me too much! ;D
In case that sounds a bit smuggins, I should point out that the curries around my neck of the woods have taken a real nose dive over the past three or four years, so the competition isn't great! I'm more often disappointed with one I've bought than one I've made. I suppose if I'm chasing anything, it's the memory of the curries I could buy back in the late 90's/early noughties.
I think I made the biggest breakthrough when I relaxed a bit, and started concentrating on just trying to make nice food. I stopped trying to add all sorts of weird and wonderful things to the base, and just worked on pan technique. As long as the usual suspects are in the base I'm happy. I backed off on spice amounts quite a lot, too.
It's worth saying that I've made many curry recipes from CR0 to spec over the years, and all of them would beat the curries I've bought from local takeaways recently hands down. There are probably about two restaurants in my local area left which still have the magic.
I do want to get a bit more adventurous, as I only ever cook Vindaloo and Madras, though. I'd also like to sort out my Tikka texture, as far as possible without a tandoor. That's partly why I've stuck my head above the parapet here again!
Just wondering if I've sussed out the picture uploading process here. If so, here's 'one I made earlier':
(http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/imagehost/pics/6a467484171411f884d0fe294716645b.jpg)
Chicken Tikka Vindaloo and pilau rice. :)
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Ian S.
Looks good to me, no need to duck mate. :D
Haven't seen that classic style of Pilau for a while and I like the way
you've colour coordinated the Vindaloo with your tray.
Should post your recipes ;)
cheers Chewy
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Nice looking curry Ian. All you need now is a bigger plate ;)
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I think I made the biggest breakthrough when I relaxed a bit, and started concentrating on just trying to make nice food. I stopped trying to add all sorts of weird and wonderful things to the base, and just worked on pan technique. As long as the usual suspects are in the base I'm happy. I backed off on spice amounts quite a lot, too.
Exactly. I think we should all start to pat ourselves on the back a little bit more if I'm honest. I know I've said this many times before but we ARE better than we give ourselves credit for. Ok, I agree, there has been a change in the BIR flavour over the years but c'mon fellas, surely we must be almost there?
I hear it quite often on here that "the local TA's/BIR's aren't as good as they used to be" fair enough, but we are a hell of a lot better than we used to be too.! Does anybody not think that we are matching them, punch for punch?
Well done Ian, and thanks for sharing your personal journey mate.
Ray :)
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Hi Ian
I agree with your post & sentiment entirely (http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=7715.msg67347#msg67347 (http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=7715.msg67347#msg67347)).
By the look of the curry in the picture you posted, you may not be giving yourself enough credit! - I hope it tastes as good as it looks - which is superb :) :P
Regards!
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Looks great Ian!
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Somebody give me a spoon, a bloody great chef's spoon. I want some of that curry. Ian, do you do deliveries. That is classic with the rice as CT said and it looks absolutely delicious and i bet it tastes it too. :P :P
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Thought the same when I caught the Indian reference on last night Baker boys.
When he said that you can't make Indian currys at home like you get at restaurants I immediately thought of this site.
Don't they ever do research? Light weights!
Interested in his chapati making though.
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HAHAHA... Given 90% + of the population consider the extent of their own curry making prowess consists of chucking a couple of spoons of Sharwoods into a bubbling pot of watery onion & veg gloop mix..but "just they can't seem to get the flavour". These kind of programs are borrocks they never tell you anything specific just cheap fodder for the dumbed down masses who would have trouble boiling an egg...At least Delia got that right..Didn't one of her programs show how to boil an egg and make some toast.. ::)