I ordered this from an open plan BIR tonight. This is based on what I could see going in - couldn't get talking to the chef. Apologies for the ingredients that I'm not 100% sure of - these were my best guess

1. 1 tbl oil (that's all). He used the unwashed pan from the previous dish. High Heat all the way through.
2. 1/2 chef spoon of yellow stuff ( this was really hard to tell, but looked like fried onions cooked in oil and turmeric - maybe curry powder)
3. 1/3 chef spoon of tomato puree (definitely the texture of puree - not ketchup)
4. 1/3 chef spoon of what look like Chilli pickle
5. Fried all this for 30 secs.
6 Added 1 tbl deep fried onion and 1 tbl deep fried Green and Red peppers and 1/4 fresh tomato
7. pinch of methi and a pinch of green chillis and fry for 30 secs (about 1/2 tsp each).
8. Added pre cooked Chicken Tikka
9. 2 big ladels of base and cooked from 4 mins
10. Pinch of fresh coriander
11. 1 chefs spoon of white solid/liquid emulsion stuff (possibly MSG/Salt/Sugar/Water combo ?? - not all dissolved )
12. This is another vague one, he sneaks under the counter in front of him and added 1/2 chef soon of some red liquid - looked like passata, but I can't be sure it wasn't some red liquid spice mixture.
13. Cooked for another min, then put in in the dish.

Sorry if this takes us back rather than forward because some of it is pretty vague.

Most interesting thing I noticed  was there was no dry spices in here at all !!

PS. The texture of the final dish was very similar if you were to make a curry from say the MarkJ base, but add very little oil to the final dish. I've now cut this down to 1 tbl in my final dishes and prefer the result.

There's certainly a lot of unusual stuff going on there blade!

I'm confused about your 'chef's spoon', the ones I have seen are pretty big, I would guess that they would hold about 4tbsp and this would make some of your measurements seem a bit on the large side?

Quote11. 1 chefs spoon of white solid/liquid emulsion stuff (possibly MSG/Salt/Sugar/Water combo ?? - not all dissolved )

What in God's name!? ? I don't think this has ever been seen before. Yet another avenue of investigation opens up.

I don't know about anyone else but this sort of post just makes me wonder if there's any consistency in making curries in restaurants. Did the curry have the taste you were expecting?

What colour was the curry?

QuotePS. The texture of the final dish was very similar if you were to make a curry from say the MarkJ base, but add very little to the final dish. I've now cut this down to 1 tbl in my final dishes and prefer the result

Are you saying you only use 1TBSP of base in your curries?

Quote from: blade1212 on June 24, 2005, 07:13 PM
12. This is another vague one, he sneaks under the counter in front of him and added 1/2 chef soon of some red liquid - looked like passata, but I can't be sure it wasn't some red liquid spice mixture.

I think this might be tandoori marinade, Kris Dhillon suggests uses this in her madras and as you have ordered the chicken tikka madras this would? make even more sense. He probably keeps it under the counter where it is cool. Do you think this could be what it was?

Yellow Fingers, The chef spoon is probably about 4 level tbls. The colour was a red/brown consistency - it leaves a trace of tumeric coloured oil on the plate, but by no means floods the plate. I used only 1 tbl of oil  in my last 2 final dishes and the texture came out much better - with no difference in the final taste.

It might be tandoori marinage but it looked smoooth and watery - maybe it was watery ketchup ?? No idea realy - this is bloody annoying I'd love to know what this white stuff was also.

I don't think the tandoori marinade is relevent to the Tikka dish in this case though - in my area, chiken tikka is often used as a straight replacement in any dish. I tend to get this as sometimes I find some BIR pre cooked standard chicken to taste *off* - i never get this off taste with BIR Tikka.

Home made pre cooked is different matter though - In fact, I prefer it.

Hold on, I wonder if it was that watery cocunut stuff..........

I didn't get an obvious cocunut taste but you never know. Maybe worth trying.

Well if it was the canned type coconut milk, the good quality ones have a thick layer of almost solid coconut 'cream', so if this was mixed a bit it would look like lumpy milk, so it could be this. I use coconut cream, the soild block type when I make madras, not enough to be able to detect it if you didn't know it was there but it certainly adds a certain something extra.

Yes, it must be that - it was exactly like lumpy watery milk

Quote from: blade1212 on June 24, 2005, 07:13 PM
added 1/2 chef soon of some red liquid - looked like passata, but I can't be sure it wasn't some red liquid spice mixture.

Having read a bit more of the Kushi balti book I think I know what this might be now. In the book is a recipe for masala sauce which they use in other recipes like CTM. I reckon a version of this is what that red sauce was because in KD's book she says to add a bit of tandoori marinade to the madras for more flavour.

Yes, I reckon you're right YF
I think the white stuff could be a coconut powder/sugar mix
That was used at my CTM demo
There's so much guess work