Just had a really interesting night at my local BIR, as a one off for the regulars and to raise money they did a race night which was good fun with a buffet of various dishes, at the end of the night one of the owners invited me into the kitchen for a natter and a look around.

I quized him on pastes added at the end of the final dish cooking and he said generally they dont but do in some dishes like rogan josh, I have already asked him about preparing tomato paste and they do fry it with garlic much as CP described.

He knows about cr0 and is thinking of doing a cooking course for us, this place has the taste so it maybe worthwhile if we can get enough of us to commit.

I saw a pasanda being cooked whilst I was in the kitchen and something amazed me, they had 3 x ~3 inch long casia sticks cooking in a single portion!, I saw the chef fish them out and asked him if that was a dish for staff but he said no it was for a customer.

I stuck my hand in their tandoor as well and lost all the hair on my hand, bloody hot those restaurant tandoors!

Amongst the ingredients at the side of the cooker i saw 2 tubs of goo, one was masala red sauce and the other was a pale gold. I asked him if this was the creamy nut base for pasanda, korma etc and he said yes.

He had 1 tub of ginger/garlic paste and 1 tub of just garlic paste, he also said they used the garlic flakes you can buy in the asian grocers but only for certain dishes like lamb garlic, tarka dhall etc

The pre fried onions had red bits in, I guess that was tomato.


He made a big thing about the 'stock' being the secret to any indian restaurant, I told him we had loads of different recipes for it and asked him for a sample which he gave me. It looks quite brown but on tasting it is very bland, there is the hint of spice and maybe a hint of carrot in it. Compared to our bases I would say it is more bland, more salty and a little sweet.

I cooked with this base and did a vindaloo with basaar mix, unfortunately I got the proportion of base and spice wrong and made a pigs ear of it, ah well (unfamiliar recipe)

to cr0.co.uk, weve been going 2 years now!

Stu, FYI I havent been able to login to cr0 for over a week. when I hit the forum I just got an error 'invalid request variable', it was only after talking to pete over email I realised it wasnt down.

In the end I had to clear out all cookies, history etc from the browser to get back in and its working now.

Someone recently asked where everyone was with their curry cooking.

Yesterday morning I cooked pretty much the best curry ever, my curries have been getting better and better recently due to a revelation Ill talk about below, it was a chicken keema achar (chicken with minced meat and pickle) with the taste.

Over the years Ive now come to the following conclusions:
There isnt a 'secret' ingredient that adds the taste (obviously there are lots of secrets of the trade but IMHO they dont add the taste)
The taste isnt to do with the base, any good base can be used (although I do think the tarka stage adds something so I would always use a base with an end tarka stage)
The taste is entirely to do with technique and maybe the restaurant cookers, more on this below.

For some time we have debated whether the heat of the BIR cooker plays some part, I think in part it probably does. I have been cooking on a 3.3KW wok burner recently, I think the bir burners are around 4.5KW, a standard large burner on a hob is 2.5KW

The technique Im talking about is the initial frying of the garlic, spices etc, I firmly believe it is this stage that produces the taste.


What I have been doing recently for the first stage in cooking a main meal is the following:

• Heat a good quantity of oil on maximum on my 3.3KW burner, heat is kept at maximum until the first lot of base goes in
• Add the garlic/ginger paste and give it a good stir round, at this point flames shoot all around the pan but not into it, in a BIR at this point the whole pan tends to end up in flames. Cook this until the garlic ginger goes a shade of light brown
• Now quickly add tomato paste (im currently using half concentrated tomato puree and half ketchup), spice mixture, salt and chilli. I now cook this mixture for about 4 minutes, its a really long time and I believe this is the key to the taste.
• If I need to I add a little water to stop it catching and you must contiually stir and shake the pan to avoid the spices burning, I tend to add fenugreek leaves after about a minute. Then I add coriander, pre cooked onions and main ingredient and after a minute or so start adding the base.
  

So in summary fry the spices on maximum for ages to release that flavour but add liquid to prevent catching  ;D

I also tend to use reclaimed oil, either from the base or main meals, also for the achar I used some oil from a huge tub of pataks lime pickle

Walked into my local BIR tonight (Mughal Spice in Chepstow) and they started talking to me about his forum!

Come on then Halal & Jalal, join up and join in!? ;D