Quote from: fstr n u on June 24, 2017, 04:01 AM
1. Have any of you come across Deggi Mirch or Meat Masala in your restaurant style curries?
2. I remember reading about seasoned oils...what i saw was Canola Oil and the chef mentioned sometimes using an oil seasoned with cinnamon sticks, bay leaves and cardamon as an option?
3. Have you seen onions precooked in only only oil and turmeric to give color?
4. Versus using coconut milk, the chef recommended using heavy cream and desiccated coconut (sweetened) to make the sauce sweeter...have you heard of this before?
There's nothing new there fstr n u. It's typical of North American style Indian restaurant cooking but not typical of British Indian restaurant cooking. The method is closer to an "authentic" vindaloo with shortcuts for the restaurant to get things cooked quickly. I use deggi as my main chilli spice and I have seen all sorts of prerepared onion variations, fried with added turmeric being just one. Meat masala could be any one of a plethora of generic spice mixes, otherwise known as curry powder. A typical one used over here is MDH kitchen king.
Similarly with the double cream (heavy cream) with sweetened, desiccated coconut it's just one more variation on adding some sort of cream with some sort of coconut flavouring. I wouldn't personally use desiccated coconut because I don't like the texture it leaves even after blending but some might call that a feature and pay good money for it. Each to their own.
As far as base thickness goes we moved away from thick bases years ago on this forum and thin soup like bases (BIR style) are the norm now.
Seasoned oil - take your pick there are several methods on the forum and rapeseed oil (canola oil) is the cheapest high smoke-point oil so gets used quite ubiquitously. Flavouring with cinnamon, bay leaf and cardamom (and possibly cloves) is a basic seasoned oil and would occur "naturally" in a home cooked Indian meal where the curry would be started with this combination.
All interesting observations but they really just bring out the differences between the North American way of doing things and the BIR way which is what this forum is more focused on.