this post was motivated by my lack of spoons when I was really craving a curry.

I really wanted something but couldn't work up the energy. The thought of making a new-to-me-making-it dish gave me enough extra spoons to work out what to do.

I like the idea of bhuna but the whole cooking down the gravy felt difficult (in my spoonless state), but I remembered I had made The Curry Guy's base gravy, which is concentrated so you need to dilute it before use.

Ding ding ding! Grab the bhuna recipe from the PDF linked from here, use the CG base gravy as-is.... got a bhuna on the table about 30 minutes later, with a spare spoon to hand!

So.... if you make the Curry Guy concentrated base gravy, you've already done a lot of the work to a bhuna 

Quote from: bhamcurry on January 13, 2024, 06:50 PM
Grab the bhuna recipe from the PDF linked from here

Can't see the link ...
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** Phil.

Confession.  For me these days pretty much the only dilution the base gets is a little cold water to de-glaze the pot it's been made in.  I like my curry fairly dry so having, for example, twice as much thinner base seems somewhat pointless.  I don't bother pre-heating the base either.  Use it straight out of the fridge.  Multiple reductions are out too.  If I also use pre-fried onions and 60  ml oil (for the curry) can get a dry one done in 10-12 minutes, although I am rarely in such a rush.  Be interesting to hear what others think.  I reckon the rules are there to be broken, sometimes.  Especially at home.

Rob

I've always preferred "dryer" curry's, or moreso ones with higher meat to gravy ratio.  I do prefer thicker sauce. Nothing irks me more in a restaurant/ TA then receiving a huge portion of runny, thin sauce and hardly any chicken or lamb.  I have cooked actual dry curry dishes before and enjoyed them.  There seems to be a bit of doubt about the modern version of the bhuna dish.  I don't really have an historical benchmark, so it's difficult for me to compare.

My two penn'orth.  If I order a chicken curry, or even a chicken Madras, I expect a largeish quantity of a relatively thin sauce, and an adequate sufficiency of chicken (the latter must never have seen the inside of a tandoor); if I order a bhuna chicken, I expect a far drier dish, but not one in which the sauce has been reduced to the texture of porridge — rather, there should have been less sauce in the first place, which has then been reduced to achieve the desired consistency.  Thick, sticky, curry sauce does nothing for me, except in dishes such as lamb dhansak where the thickening is intentional and facilitated by the addition of dal.  From my memories of "the good old days", I seem to recall that chicken pathia had a similar texture/consistency to bhuna chicken, with a flavour closer to chicken dhansak.
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** Phil.

Quote from: Peripatetic Phil on January 13, 2024, 08:23 PM

Quote from: bhamcurry on January 13, 2024, 06:50 PM
Grab the bhuna recipe from the PDF linked from here

Can't see the link ...
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** Phil.

...for there is none. @bhamcurry, can you advise?