still 30 mins of simmering to go.......mmmmmmmmm smells damn good already
quick question. should i remove the cassia bark and cloves and bay leaves before i blend it?

Hello Ritchie,

As far as I'm aware, Chilli Prawn (and Andy) advocate leaving the whole spices in his base and blending them.

Regards,

cheers for that CA

You're welcome Ritchie,

It seems to me that this is sound provided that the whole spices are soft enough to be blended fine enough.

Regards,

Cory, I diasgree. Chances are the wood will still be wood so I recommend removing the Cassia and cloves before  blending.

I've made the mistake before and almost runined my base - had to strain the lot which took forever.

Good point Jeera,

If in doubt, fish 'em out! 

I reckon it would be a good idea to fish out any cassia bark or cinnamon sticks.

But, as I said, if the whole spices are otherwise soft enough to blend fine enough, I think they are ok to be left in.  I have just made Andy's curry base.  I left all of the whole spices in and they were soft enough to be blended into indiscernible oblivion!  Just to recap, this included:

• 10 cardamom pods
• 2 tsp fennel seeds
• 1 tsp cloves
• 1 tsp ajwain seeds

But I think I'm right in saying that CP and Andy advocate leaving them all in (rightly or wrongly)?

Regards,

Many thanks to you both for the advice, i found a lot more than the 20 cloves i put in to the sauce, i guess cloves shed layers when cooked, also the bark was more like a small digeridoo, so that went a journey. as did most of the bay leaves.The sauce is looking a treat, with a nice layer of spice oil on the top.

before the spice-mix


after adding the spice-mix

I have not tried this base yet, but the finished result seems to look very good.

This could be teh next one to try for me.

S