It is the moment you have all been waiting for, the results of the Bombay Aloo group test. It was great fun to do and there were two clear winners in Dipuraja and Solarsplace. 4 judges preferred Dips, 2 preferred Solars.

My thoughts were that they were both excellent but I found the mango chutney in Solars just made it a bit too sweet for me. Other people obviously prefer that so I suggest everyone gives them bot a go and either picks their favourite or tweek one of them to your own palate. They are both very good starting places to tailor your own recipe.

Thanks again to all the judges. I will let you all post your tasting notes below but thanks for emailing them over to me.

The link for all of the recipes is: https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=5537.0

<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_8ZixU3Nbf9c/TY4rx9j4U5I/AAAAAAAAAmE/p0dL3YJGVzs/s800/Bombay%20Aloo.jpg" height="800" width="449" />

OK, here are my tasting notes :


A) Solar's Place

Not particularly good as an accompaniment to a main course, but absolutely superb as a stuffing for paratha, comparable to Masala Dosa at its best.


B) 976BAR

1) 2" cubes of potato are very large
2) 2" of ginger is rather vague : I buy very large ginger,  and if I were to cut a 2" piece out of the middle, it would be enormous !  Weights are probably more useful in a group test recipe.
3) "add the spices and fry for about 30 seconds" : the question is, "which are the spices" ?  As there is no mention of introducing the ginger and garlic anywhere else, I assumed these were included, but I also included the garam masala, not seeing that this was to be added much later in the proceedings.  Perhaps better to be more specific about exactly what to fry for about 30 seconds.
4) Mustard seeds : I have black, brown and yellow -- not at all clear which were intended.
5) Salt : there is no mention of salt anywhere in the recipe, as a result of which I am afraid that I found the end result completely tasteless; perhaps it should say "salt, to taste", with a suggested quantity.

Adding salt made a significant improvement, but adding spinach, red pak choi & mizuna leaves led to a superb Aloo Sag.  The strength of this dish is the mustard seeds.


C) Balti cookbook

Excessively hot, and needing six potatoes, has resulted in excessive waste. Also too tomato-ey.  No salt, so no flavour.


D) Dipuraja

Suspect I may have used curry leaves rather than methi leaves (jar unlabelled), and dish failed to impress (tasted like Charlotte potatoes rather than Bombay Aloo, until coriander leaf added whereupon whole thing livened up).  Unlike SP's, not so good by itself, but the best so far as an accompaniment to main course.  Recipe leaves almost everything to the imagination, so no idea whether I re-created his dish accurately.  Mildly salted, but could have used more.


E) ChewyTikka

Quantity of potatoes unspecified.  No salt.  Recipe failed to convince; it was satisfactory, but failed to impress.  Le Khanh & I agreed that, of the five tasted/tested so far, this one regrettably comes last.  There was nothing wrong with it per se, simply lacked character.


F) Undercover Curry

Nicely salted, but surprising lack of any tomato (pur

Quote from: chriswg on March 29, 2011, 10:14 AM
I found the hardest this was no turning it into a potato curry, which I guess looking at the ingredients it kind of what it is. It's also hard to use the base sparingly enough but most of the good BA's I've had from BIR's haven't been swimming in sauce, they just have a thick sauce sticking to the potato.

Strangely enough, that was exactly the effect I achieved, simply because having used Charlottes par-boiled for only five minutes they then needed considerable extra cooking in the spiced base, so at the end of the exercise the base was indeed reduced to "a thick sauce sticking to the potato". 

Incidentally, yesterday I cooked a second batch of Sag Aloo from a recipe supplied offline by another forum member (I will preserve his/her anonymity until such time as he/she chooses to go public with this recipe) and despite this having Exquisa pre-cooked for ten minutes, I still managed to undercook them when preparing the final dish.  So, today I added my one remaining cupful of Taz base and re-cooked, this time with the lid on, until I felt that the potatoes were fully cooked, then removed them and reduced the remaining sauce and sag until it once again had a good thick consistency, then poured this back onto the potatoes.  I tried one once it had had sufficient time to cool, and the second cooking didn't't seem to have affected the flavour adversely in any way.

** Phil.

Quote from: chriswg on March 29, 2011, 10:14 AM
Axe just pointed out that I forgot to include his results so I will update the speadsheet and modify the OP soon.

Much appreciated Chris.

A really enjoyable test that I certainly benefited from.

Well done to everyone.

I probably wont have time for a couple of weeks. My step mum passed away yesterday so I'm having to rush to Gsy tomorrow for a few days. Below are his results, if anyone can input them and the figures from the ones above and post them it would be much appreciated.


            Taste   Texture   Cheap   Ease   Total
976           7           5           8           8   7.0
ABC           3           6           9           7   6.3
UC           4           7           9           9   7.3
SOLAR   9.5           9           7           9   8.6
CHEWY   9.5           9           9           9   9.1
DPR           8           9           9           9   8.8