Unfortunately my work no longer takes me within reach of London, otherwise  I would very much like to make a visit back to the Bengal Cuisine.  Armed with the knowledge gleaned from this forum over the past year I think it would be interesting to see if some ideas could be brought together and confirmed through such a visit?

It's the restaurant revelations that seem to push things on a notch, so I wonder if there is anyone out there who would consider doing one of these lessons? With a bit of thought  (or discussion on here) beforehand on "tactics" of what to ask,  I think some  useful information could be gotten out of the nice people down Brick Lane.

Is there anyone in that neck of the woods who might be up for it?

I've posted a couple of times before on this because I can't seem to get my head around the technique for recovering oil.

I made a base at the weekend that more or less followed the Bruce E recipe. I used about 400 mil of oil. At the end of cooking the base I let it rest and did have a thin covering of oil across the top. However this layer was only a few mm thick and proved difficult to skim off. I tried to using a wooden spatula and then a spoon, but end up with about 40% base 60% oil. I then added about 3tbsp of this mixture to my final dish but there was no way of recovering any oil from this dish. Obviously I'm still doing something wrong though I do tend to end up with quite thick sauces in the final dish so I wonder if the oil gets lost in suspensions due to this viscosity?

Would anyone be able to photograph and post the important steps of this process. It will hopefully help this numpty out!

Many thanks

Sorry if this is asking the obvious but in not resusing oil does that you mean you guys are expecting these dishes not to have the taste? Presumably the restaurant dishes do so that leads to the question of how they achieve it?

Pete - it would be an interesting experiment to see if you could take the knowledge from the development of the KD base and make this base really "work"...without changing it to the point it becomes the KD base of course!!

Hi Mark,

Great news.

After making the base for the first time, how much of that 500ml do you estimate you skimmed off?

Hi guys,

I have read the recent developments with interest. Sounds promising.

One problem that I have is with the skimming of the oil. It doesnt seem to matter which base I use or how much oil. By the time I have finished the base the oil has mixed into it. Can anyone advise whether the thickness of the base might affect oil absorption.?

I tend to either cook with the base straight away or leave it to cool and freeze but I never seem to get the oil floating on top even after cooling.
Same goes for the final dish itself. Typically the dish will call for 4TBP of oil to start, and by the time the precooked ingredients have been added and the dish is ready there is no oil to be skimmed.


I'm puzzled by this. Any ideas where Im going wrong? In all other respects I'm very pleased with the results.

How much oil would it be reasonable to skim of a finished dish using a typical recipe off this site?

Hi all,

I might be getting my own hopes up as well as some of yours possibly, but I've dropped hints with the missus for a while now that for me next birthday (which is a bit of a milestone) I would like to spend the day being a kichen boy in a curry house somwhere.
Her wry responses lead me to think that she might have been able to sort it somewhere. its the middle of next month.

There's no gurantees of course but my thinking is that if somewhere is willing to let me in for the day then there's a good chance they won't be trying to hide anything. All being well, I'll see a base sauce going from onion sack to plate.

Now...does anyone have one of those covert cameras  that they can lend me?!

I went out over the bank holiday with friends and the following dishes were ordered:

chilli garlic chicken
chicken jalfrezi
chicken pathia
chicken madras.

As usual I sampled a bit of everyones and cam to the conclusion that all were remarkably similar. Presumably the base ssauce was the same in each, but id guess that also the final dish was basically the same spcies as well, which suprosed me a little. From the "basic" madras each times...

a few slices of onion and chillies, and a couple of cubes of to make the jalfrezi,
the same plus some visible slices of garlic were added for the chilli garlic,
and for the pathia just some sugar and lemon juice was added.

The same happened last night at a different restaurant in that the pathia and the jalfrezi were remarkably similar in both appearance and to be fair, in taste also.


This leads to the question of how much variety do you think there should be in these medium-hot dishes? I dont think it was that 'good' a BIR we went to on either occasion.? Can arrive at a definitive view of what the differences in taste and texture should be between each of these dishes?

Hi Pete,

Did you have any luck with prices etc on a demo in Brum?

this leads nicely on to a couple of questions I was about to post to ask...

After a bit of a break awy from the actual curry making at home over past weeks, I had a bash at the 10 onion version of the large scale recipe found on here (sorry I print them and have forgotten who posted these). The end result of the base looked very promising apart from being slightly thicker than what Ive seen in a BIR (my  pot is not quite big enough) and a lack of oil. I actually used slightly more than the specified 1/2 inch but found that after puree-ing and continuing cooking the oil becomes lost in the mix. Ive found this happens with every base gravy Ive made.

I then proceeded to knock up a CTP, and a korma for the missus with recipies from this forum.  Imo both were probably the best Ive done so far. I thought that they had the taste in part, but not quite all the way (if that makes sense) and I concluded that the main discrepancy would be the thickness of the gravy and the amount of oil I used. The final dish in a BIR tends to be much oilier than mine.
Unfortunately the missus wasn?t that impressed. While it was nice she didn?t think it was particularly close to a BIR korma.  That said I 'mopped up' up some of hers - as I usually do - and thought it was pretty close both in look, texture and taste.

All in all, I think this edged me closer but I'm still not there. Has anyone else had the same oil issues? I still think prolonged experience in a BIR kitchen is going to be the only way to really crack this.

Going on what most BIR's Ive had serve up I would estimate I need to double the amount of oil I'm using somewhere along the line...