Quote from: Curry King on February 18, 2005, 11:18 PM
Heres another one I made this time im using the trusty gravy but with added cashew nuts, carrots and potatoes

A differnet taste from the standard, sweeter and darker in colour, very nice though?

The above Vindaloo looks really good.
Are you as pleased with your home results as you are with ones you buy, now?
It looks brilliant, I can almost smell the aroma.

Quote from: curryqueen on March 03, 2005, 11:46 AM
how were the prawns prepared before putting into the curry? I will try this madras today and let you know the resullts. Can't wait!

This is Pete writing.
I'm posting under this name because my real name won't allow "replies"
Actually this was a mixed veg curry but the prawns I have seen are thawed "frozen prawns".
I have seen them simply on a plate or in yoghurt cartons with water.
I think the water idea is best because prawns can get a bit "strong" and dominate the dish.

Quote from: Curry King on March 03, 2005, 10:17 AM
Do you know if they make all their currys using balti paste then?

The balti paste was in a prominate position.
There were no other pastes except a tandoori
So I would guess it goes in a lot.
Do you remember the word document from in2curry "my restaurant experiences".
That said a spoon of tandoori paste was used to jip up most meals.
In fact I think it says something about adding a bit of tandoori marinade in Kris Dhillons book.
I bought some of the Pataks Balti sauce yesterday.
It doesn't look anything like what they had.
Theirs looked like a dirty brown puree

Pete

I spent most of the day cooking and ended up with two base sauces
They take so long to do
The first sauce was Muttleys with the slight changes I mentioned above.
The second? was a very similar sauce but I had fried some finely chopped garlic until brown then mixed it in
I placed these along the curry base I bought last night and got one of my kids to do a blind taste on them.
He preferred Muttleys.
He acknowledged the takeaway base having a flavour that he couldn't identify.
But we've all said that, haven't we?

I have compared the two sauces now.
Muttleys is more runny and lacks a certain body to it
The place I got the sauce from said they put in chick peas and carrots, so that's probably it.
I think the finely chopped bits in the sauce are garlic.
There are definitely two differnet types of base.
The runny one and the thick one.
With the addition of a carrot, 1/2 a can of chick peas in the main boil.
And a couple of cloves of finely chopped garlic in the last half hour of cooking, I think that will do it.
I'm going to try it again, while I still have some of the curry house base sauce to compare.
My mouth feels disgusting.
This curry tasting has a price
The next time anyone buys a curry, why not ask for some of the base sauce.
It won't cost much, and we could do some real comparisons.

I can no longer post under my real name so I have had to join again!!
This is really Pete talking

I bought The Base Curry Sauce from a Restaurant



I went back to one of the places that gave me a cooking demonstration, and I bought the sauce.
On it?s own it is really nice
If you used it to make a curry, then you couldn?t fail to make a brilliant curry.
This sauce is thick.
It has a taste of mildly spiced tomatoes
I know it's mainly onion but the tomato seems to dominate
If you make a shape in it, it doesn?t fill in.
It has the same consistency as any sauce with a curry.
You could happily eat it on its own.
It is red brown
Salty
Smells of caramelised garlic ginger
There are some very finely chopped white bits in which I thought might? be tomato seeds, then I thought they might be garlic, now I really don?t know.
They don?t seem to have much of a flavour but are slightly crisp.
There is definitely an amount of garlic in it (my mouth knows it had a curry)
I think the closest I have made to this, is Muttleys Non Rambling Base.
In fact I am currently thawing out some of his base to do a direct comparison.
I will post the result