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1
Pictures of Your Curries / Re: Masala fish
« on: Today at 02:34 AM »
The sea bass looks especially fantastic, Rob.
Any chance of your recipe(s) please?
Any chance of your recipe(s) please?
2
Starters and Side Dishes Chat / Re: Doner kebab
« on: February 19, 2025, 01:37 AM »Here is a detailed review of the LA Diner meat:
https://shawarmapolice.com/2017/08/04/farmfoods-l-a-diner-doner-meat/
Oh no, Bob - did you read that review? It gives it a score of 0/10 and says:
Quote
It has the texture of a graveyard
Tastes like existential dread
When you open the packet, it smells like someone has farted on it
There are absolutely no redeeming features about this product. None whatsoever.
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Starters and Side Dishes Chat / Re: Doner kebab
« on: February 16, 2025, 10:36 PM »
As beautiful as the dish looks, I find Farmfoods' doner meat tastes really terrible. Ditto for all the other supermarket ones I've tried (Iceland/Food Warehouse, Home Bargains, and two others from Farmfoods under the "Jahan" and "Speedy Chef" brands (both produced by Istanbul Doner which also produces catering doner)). I also bought a 5KG catering box of Ali Baba brand pre-cut doner and it was equally disappointing.
They all use mechanically separated chicken as the main ingredient which always tastes rotten to me.
Good doner should be lamb and/or beef. Only the cheap stuff uses chicken because it's dirt cheap.
In my experience if you want good doner at home you either have to make it yourself or buy from a known good takeaway.
They all use mechanically separated chicken as the main ingredient which always tastes rotten to me.
Good doner should be lamb and/or beef. Only the cheap stuff uses chicken because it's dirt cheap.
In my experience if you want good doner at home you either have to make it yourself or buy from a known good takeaway.
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Lets Talk Curry / Re: How do you stop your curries all tasting too similar?
« on: February 07, 2025, 04:43 AM »
A few other thoughts: I had a "real" (takeaway) bhuna tonight for the first time in a while and I was pretty shocked at the difference between it and my recent home-made curries.
The takeaway bhuna was thinner and wetter than I make my own. Not too much floating oil, but the container was stained plenty well which probably means there was lots of oil mixed in with the base.
The taste was the real interesting part. Compared to my own version it was much less rich in flavour. Instead there was a pronounced kind of sourness and a kind of sharp, tangy feeling to it. Not quite like lemon juice, but almost. My own curries definitely don't have this sourness. I'm thinking the key difference was maybe tomatoes. I tend to use tomatoes straight from the tin. Maybe I should be blending them with plenty of water and perhaps try adding methi and garlic like I've seen Latif's Inspired (YouTube) do.
The smell of the curry was also less rich than my own - dare I say mine might even smell better than this one did - however there's definitely still something missing from my own which I still can't identify. You know when you get poppadoms and the bag is all oily? There's a smell to the bag (or that oil) which I think I can also detect in the curry. Maybe they're using reclaimed fryer oil which they've previously used to fry the poppadoms. We all know that onion bhaji and pakora oil is used in a lot of curries but this smelled different. I would love to know what takeaways do with the "regular" fryer oil (chips etc.) - I can't believe they all just chuck it out.
The takeaway bhuna was thinner and wetter than I make my own. Not too much floating oil, but the container was stained plenty well which probably means there was lots of oil mixed in with the base.
The taste was the real interesting part. Compared to my own version it was much less rich in flavour. Instead there was a pronounced kind of sourness and a kind of sharp, tangy feeling to it. Not quite like lemon juice, but almost. My own curries definitely don't have this sourness. I'm thinking the key difference was maybe tomatoes. I tend to use tomatoes straight from the tin. Maybe I should be blending them with plenty of water and perhaps try adding methi and garlic like I've seen Latif's Inspired (YouTube) do.
The smell of the curry was also less rich than my own - dare I say mine might even smell better than this one did - however there's definitely still something missing from my own which I still can't identify. You know when you get poppadoms and the bag is all oily? There's a smell to the bag (or that oil) which I think I can also detect in the curry. Maybe they're using reclaimed fryer oil which they've previously used to fry the poppadoms. We all know that onion bhaji and pakora oil is used in a lot of curries but this smelled different. I would love to know what takeaways do with the "regular" fryer oil (chips etc.) - I can't believe they all just chuck it out.
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Lets Talk Curry / Re: How do you stop your curries all tasting too similar?
« on: February 07, 2025, 04:30 AM »They probably use a very bland base gravyYou're right. I've asked for a portion of base gravy from my local and it tasted really very bland, just like a basic vegetable soup. Hardly a trace of spice or anything else. It was also very light yellow in colour which I imagine means it goes into all curries including the mildest.
I make mixed powder, but I'm finding that I use less and less of itInterestingly I've always found mixed powder a bit of a questionable ingredient. I'm in Scotland and I believe there's a theory that Scottish BIR doesn't use any mixed powder at all - or at least uses it sparingly. From my personal experience recreating dishes I would say that's true. Scottish BIR more heavily on richness from fat and condiments (and food colouring).
I have just found the delight of Deghi MirchI thought it was just like a mixture of paprika and regular chilli powder, no? Does it taste noticeably different?
Hotel style uses up to 7 different graviesI've seen many videos of hotel style cooking but have yet to try any because of the amount of prep. The yellow gravy does look very close to a regular BIR base gravy . The makhani gravy and chop masala I could see being used in BIR places, but again maybe not Scottish ones?
The YouTube channel "Travels in India, London & the UK" has plenty of videos of London restaurants using Indian-style gravies, though.
One thing you might like to try, however, is to use Bassar curry masala where a recipe calls for hot chilli powder
I remember trying it years ago and finding it too overpowering, but maybe I used too much. I could definitely see how it would provide a different, poignant taste though.
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Lets Talk Curry / How do you stop your curries all tasting too similar?
« on: February 06, 2025, 04:46 AM »
Recently I've been getting a bit bored of my own curries - not because they're bad, but because they all taste quite similar.
Obviously I don't mean my korma tastes the same as my madras, however I do find that my curries tend to fall within two or three groups, flavour-wise:
* Creamy (korma, some chasni, CTM, makhani etc)
* Tomatoey/rich (rogan josh, madras, bhuna, dopiaza, jalfrezi, jaipuri, karahi, balti)
* Sharp/tangy (achari, some chasni)
Even when I try to vary the flavours by adding more of a certain element (e.g. peppers) the underlying curry itself still tastes pretty similar.
To my palate, a bhuna can taste almost identical to a karahi, which can be only slightly different from a jaipuri/jalfrezi, which can be almost identical to a balti, and a madras is like a hotter rogan josh.
Does anyone have any techniques they use to really make each curry stand out?
How do the restaurants do it?
Obviously I don't mean my korma tastes the same as my madras, however I do find that my curries tend to fall within two or three groups, flavour-wise:
* Creamy (korma, some chasni, CTM, makhani etc)
* Tomatoey/rich (rogan josh, madras, bhuna, dopiaza, jalfrezi, jaipuri, karahi, balti)
* Sharp/tangy (achari, some chasni)
Even when I try to vary the flavours by adding more of a certain element (e.g. peppers) the underlying curry itself still tastes pretty similar.
To my palate, a bhuna can taste almost identical to a karahi, which can be only slightly different from a jaipuri/jalfrezi, which can be almost identical to a balti, and a madras is like a hotter rogan josh.
Does anyone have any techniques they use to really make each curry stand out?
How do the restaurants do it?
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Lets Talk Curry / Re: Anyone consistently making restaurant-quality dishes w. "the taste"? If so, how?
« on: February 05, 2025, 11:51 PM »
As to the topic of this thread I should say that I'm making curries with a BIR taste most of the time, but it's not quite 100%, and that's why I asked if anyone else has got the consistency down. The missing pieces for me probably just come down to things like ingredient brands, spice ratios, and strength of the curry base etc.
My view is that the fundamental BIR taste is a combination of onions, GG paste, spices, and reclaimed oil. How accurately this taste can be reproduced at home will vary from person to person because of their own preferences and the techniques/ingredients used by their local curry houses, but I definitely think those four elements make up the majority of the "secret".
My view is that the fundamental BIR taste is a combination of onions, GG paste, spices, and reclaimed oil. How accurately this taste can be reproduced at home will vary from person to person because of their own preferences and the techniques/ingredients used by their local curry houses, but I definitely think those four elements make up the majority of the "secret".
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Lets Talk Curry / Re: Anyone consistently making restaurant-quality dishes w. "the taste"? If so, how?
« on: February 05, 2025, 11:44 PM »Hi all if any recipes needed please give me a shout and will have a look, have all the Taz recipes, which are excellent and also the Cook4One recipes too which i have tried nearly all of them.That's amazing UF. Is it just you doing everything yourself from home, like a cottage industry? I dream about being able to do that, if only so I have an excuse to buy ingredients in bulk.
I do still sell curries around 40-120 a week, better than the restaurant, that's what my customers say lol.
CTM is my best seller by far making 20-30 every week.
If you have all the Taz recipes saved offline, could I PM you with my email address for a copy of them all, please? I can then post them (with credit to you) in their respective threads.
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Lets Talk Curry / Re: Anyone consistently making restaurant-quality dishes w. "the taste"? If so, how?
« on: February 01, 2025, 12:57 AM »I hope that helps. If anyone has any reasonable questions or constructive I'm happy to respond.Thanks a lot for replying, Stephen, and well done on achieving a result you're happy with.
Like livo in the post above, I had a search of the forum for recipes using the Taz base but it seems that they've all been lost; truncated by a forum bug or similar. For example, one of your own posts for Chicken Punjabi Masala is missing most of its content.
Do you have a copy of your recipes stored offline? If so, would you be willing and able to upload them again for us please? You're very welcome to send them to me directly and I can type them up / format them for the forum if that's easier.
I hope we can recover at least some of the lost recipes; it would be such a shame to let them remain lost.
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Lets Talk Curry / Re: Anyone consistently making restaurant-quality dishes w. "the taste"? If so, how?
« on: February 01, 2025, 12:47 AM »The forum is broken.Yes I noticed this myself several years ago. I sent a PM to the admin (Yousef) about it but never heard back.
You could try finding a historical copy of any broken pages using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine but it's unlikely that many pages have been archived.