Quote from: chewytikka on January 16, 2014, 08:43 PM
Hi chelseafan71
Bangladeshi BIR don't know this one...
But I've cooked this many times over the years.

You maybe should give Sanjay AKA Mr.Vahrehvah's two part recipe a try.
Crispy battered chicken, tossed in a sticky Indo-Chinese sauce. YumYum

Good Thread here with link
https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,5599.msg55000.html#msg55000

cheers Chewy

Looks interesting and I 'll probably give it a try, but that seems to me to be more like what i would recognise as a hakka style dish - the version of chicken 65 I was introduced to was served as chicken tikka would be - with salad, not in sauce.

(slightly off-topic...
If you aren't sure what hakka is, it's also known in toronto as indian-style chinese - which from my understanding is not authentic true hakka cuisine, but is amazingly delicious - the term can also be used in reference to jamaican-chinese dishes.  I didn't come across anything in london comparable to the toronto hakka experience, but if you are ever in toronto you should check it out - the lin garden (sheppard&pharmacy) is my hakka go-to. The toronto hakka restaurant community is reportedly an off-shoot of an ethnic chinese community from calcutta who congregated in the east end of toronto - not sure how accurate that story is though

Chicken 65 is a starter I used to have in my favourite Curry house back in the UK (the sree krishna in sw17) - It's a southern indian restaurant and this is a recipe that is aparently popular as a bar-snack in southern india. (Think of it as an alternative to a chicken tikka starter crossed with popcorn chicken - Although much much tastier than that sounds)

The recipe is based on one I found online somewhere that has been modified according to my taste via experimentation and what the owner of the restaurant told me when i told him we were moving to canada and I'd miss his establishment. He even gave me an uncooked portion in the marinade so we could have it one more time before we left the country.

I made this dish a couple of days ago, but forgot to take pics - I'll try and add some next time I make it


Makes a starter for 2

For the marinade:
Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast - 1 lb (cut into bite size pieces)
Ginger Garlic Paste - 2 tsp
Coriander Powder - 2 tsp
Very Hot Chili Powder 0.75  tsp (vary depending on the potency of your chilli powder)
Cumin Powder 0.25 tsp
Turmeric powder 0.5tsp
Garam Masala 0.25 tsp
Cornflour - 2 tsp
Rice Flour - 1 tsp (chickpea flour would also work)
Natural Greek Yoghurt  2 tbsp
Red Food Colour - 0.25 tsp
Lemon Juice - 1 tbsp
Egg - 1 (beaten)
Salt  pinch (to taste)


Other ingredients:

Oil - for frying

Curry Leaves - a decent stalks worth
Green Chilies - 2 halved

Raw onion slices - few just to garnish
Half a Lemon cut in wedges
Shredded lettuce to garnish



Method:

1.Mix all the ingredients listed under 'For the marinade' and mix well. Add the chicken
2.Allow it to marinade for a minimum of 2 hours at least - the more time the softer the chicken 65 will be - I usually go overnight.
3. Heat about 1cm of oil in a pan and fry curry leaves and green chillies till crisp and set aside. (You can also include pieces of ginger and garlic with the tempering ingredients).Then add the chicken pieces in batches and fry until crispy.
The batter should form a thin crisp delicious shell around the chicken


Serve immediately with the same sort of things you would with a chicken tikka - (on a sizzling cast iron platter if you have one) with raw onion,lemon wedges,shredded lettuce etc and raita to dip/pour on top.
you can also garnish with the chilli/curry leaves if you want.


The raita I use is based on one from this site that I modified slightly
1 cup natural greek yoghurt
2 tsp mint sauce
1 tbsp mango chutney (with the chunks mashed)
couple squirts lemon juice
1tsp runny clear honey
a few drops of the oil off the top of lime pickle
couple of drops of green or yellow food colouring if you want

mix thoroughly then let it sit for at least an hour then adjust according to taste -
milk to thin, extra yoghurt to thicken, extra mango chutney for sweetness, extra lemon for tartness

Just thought I'd chime in and say that i tried this (with a couple of minor variations) and It came out pretty good - Very tasty & moist chicken
I think my broiler may be a little short on the heat required and It was a bit soggy on the outside so When It comes time to pull the bbq out I'll try it on there and see what difference it makes.

Quote from: michael.t on November 28, 2013, 05:28 PM
Hi CF7
I'm from Wimbledon(Merton Pk)
I have been to the Scree Krishna once many years ago and it does have great reviews
I think then it was for vegetarians Now I head for the Pakistani Restaurants past Tooting Broadway st
In more resent years a great Restaurant has opened in Morden of all places
And yes I am a Chelsea Fan was given tickets for the last home game and we were truly awful  ;D
Cheers Michael

The sree was one of the first curry houses i went to , back when i was a teenager, but when i moved to canada i kind of forgot about it. When i moved back to the uk in 2007 i ended up living in colliers wood just down the road from it, noticed it on the bus and gave it a try and it was amazing - it's now being run by the son of the guy who was running the place when i first went there - when me and the missus had our final curry there before moving back to canada, he gave us some marinated chicken65 so we could have one last taste the next day before heading to the airport. Nice guys in there and great food - if you go there I'd recommend you start with a chicken masala dosai and/or chicken 65 (they used to split the dosai for me and the missus and we'd share the chicken 65) and then take something from the chefs specials sections - i like the karaikudi and chettinad dishes.

paprika by south wimbledon station is also not a bad place in the more modern indian style - (the "devils tomato" starter is a memorable highlight) but we rarely went ther because the sree was closer and our favourite.

Quote from: Stephen Lindsay on November 27, 2013, 08:44 PM
welcome from Scotland

You can mix and match base recipes to an extent as a lot of bases are very similar with the differences being tweaks rather than fundamentals.

A lot of bases on here would serve your purpose. As said chewytikka has posted a lot of videos combining his base and his recipes with the added value of a video to show you how. A good starter base is BE (Bruce Edwards who has written extensively and includes an article on how to make a good curry on this site. Both are versatile in my opinion.

The base I use is called Taz and I have posted a number of recipes to go with this. This base does not go with other recipes so much because it requires a different technique than other bases. This is because it is an oil rich base therefore there is no pre-frying ("bhoona-ing") of spices in oil as there is with other bases. The spices go into the base and they fry because of the oil in the base. The advantage of this method is there is less risk or burning or over cooking spices and so you get predictable results every time.

The best base of all is a matter of personal taste and preference, a bit like your team. One man's Chelsea is another man's Spurs, or indeed another man's Dundee United.

Happy cooking!

Thanks for the response - I had noticed that you have posted a number of curry recipes using the taz base, but I wasn't too clear on the difference between that base and some of the others so thanks for clearing that up. In terms of the bhoona-ing of ground spices, I have been more used in my currymaking to dry-roasting whole spice and then grinding - I'm assuming that the typical BIR would not create their massalas that way - would that be for reasons of time/expense or both? or are there BIRs that grind their own spices & blends?
Dundee united? some lean years behind you I'm guessing and despite our current status I remember them well enough, but it could have been so much worse - If I'd been 10 yrs younger I would probably have been a wimbledon fan (that hasn't worked out so well for my brother, although afc are on the rise), but they weren't on the radar in the 70s when I was a nipper

Quote from: joshallen2k on November 27, 2013, 06:26 PM
Hi there - my path has pretty much followed yours. I'm in Toronto (High Park area).

You will get a ton of useful advice on bases and recipes. Personally I use a rotation of the Chewtikka base, Zaal base, and Little India.

If you are looking for a BIR style curry, the absolute closest I've found is a restaurant in Peterborough, Ontario called Shafiqs. In fact, I've found nothing in Metro Toronto that comes closer to BIR than Shafiqs. There are some excellent "authentic Indian" ones though.

If you're east of Toronto, make the trip to Shafiqs!

For getting some of the hard-to-find ingredients and spices, I use Bombay Bazaar in Markham.

-- Josh

Thanks for the heads-up on shafiqs - next time I'm out towards peterborogh I'll try and get there - would have been useful to know a few years ago when my motherinlaw had a cottage out towards hastings which is close by.
I usually get my curry supplies at patel brothers (on markham just north of lawrence in scarborough) - pretty good selection, but beware the chilli powder - their medium is nothing of the sort.

There are a few southern indian restaurants in scarborough that I have either tried already or are on the list, but nothing so far to match my favourite BIR

On a slightly different tangent - have you encountered many decent hakka establishments? - my favourite is the lin garden (pharmacy and sheppard - handy for 401 & vic park). Hakka is the one food that i really missed from canada when I went back to the uk - surprised it hasn't made any impact.

Quote from: Garp on November 27, 2013, 07:55 PM
Welcome mate - we won't mention Basel (oops)

I agree - Let's not
Let's also not mention the toronto maple leafs or mayor rob ford

I'm a londoner in Toronto (actually east of Toronto) - Moved here in 98 and was unable to find what I considered a decent curry - moved back to london between 2007-11 and re-introduced myself (and introduced the Missus) to english style curries - Now we're back in the frozen north, I've been cooking more and more curries, but the goal is to reproduce the dishes of our favourite curry house, the Sree Krishna in Tooting (London SW17). The Sree specialises in the cuisine of Kerala and Tamil Nadu (although it also does reasonable versions of the usual BIR suspects) so I'm not sure how the more regional cuisine plays into the base-sauce techniques, but hopefully I can make some progress.
My experimentation has yielded a pretty good chicken 65, a passable chicken masala dosai filling - the dosai itself has yet to come out succesfully, and a karaikudi chicken fry (karaikudi chicken varuval) that is just a couple of steps away from being spot on. I'll post these recipes and probably a recomendation for the Sree in due course.
In the meantime I have a couple of questions that I hope you guys will be a ble to answer.
From what I have read so far, would it be correct to say that the different bases each require different recipes to create the different curries?
Which base or bases would the experts consider to be a) the most beginner-friendly as I am new to the base-sauce technique but not to making curries , b) the most versatile - by which I mean have the largest number of tested or recommended recipes available for use with them and c) the best base of them all
I appreciate your comments