I've read at various times the "urban myth" version of how Chicken Tikka Masala came into being, and that the original version used a mixture of blended cashews with Campbells Tomato Soup as the base sauce.

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However, that aside, I haven't had a food blender for a few years, one came on special recently so I bought it - it's a good old-school blender with metal base and glass jug and a killer for doing nut milks, so I ran up about half a litre of cashew cream with unsalted cashews and water, tastes divine, and wondering what recipes? I used about half a cup which I stirred into boiled red lentils today whilst doing a Tarka dahl, just before hitting it with the smoking garlic/ginger/cumin/hing oil, and it's hit the spot.

Do BIR restaurants use cashew cream in many dishes? 

Hi Beachbum, I see it on alot of the Korma variants(Nawab,Shahi), some tikka masalas, Pasanda, https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=7895.0, makhani masala. How they find their way in, whether it be in a cream / flaked may differ, but there are plenty of bir dishes containing  both cashew & cream , probably on the mild side

Regards
ELW

Hi Beachbum,

Yes it is used in dishes in restaurants. I work part time in a restaurant here in Brisbane making the gravies.

Blended cashews go into the butter gravy which is akin to the Zaal Masala paste, and it also goes into the Korma gravy, or nut gravy as well.

Combinations of gravies are put together to make the final dishes and will hence end up with different amounts of cashew in it.

For example a meat korma dish is as follows:

1.5 chef spoon onion gravy
1.0 chef spoon korma gravy
pre-cooked meat and stock
big pinch garam masala
big pinch pepper
pinch salt
pinch methi
100ml cream
1 tbsp coconut milk powder
sugar

The cashews are soaked in boiling water for a good 15-30mins and then ground to a smooth paste. They are then added to the base gravies once the rest of the ingredients are done and are cooked for another 30-60mins in the gravy until the oil rises.

Cheers,
Mark

Great stuff, thanks. I don't know if you are familiar with Maharani's at Boondall, North Brisbane, I love their creamy sauces and wondered if they had cashew in them - I'll give that nut gravy a go. 

I asked them which part of India they are from and they are actually Gujarati and say they have never been to the UK, so maybe that's why they have a slightly different take on BIR - it's the only Indian restaurant that SWMBO likes to visit even though we have a branch of Indian Brothers five minutes walk from us here on Bribie Island.  :

If you maybe wanted to PM me the name of your restaurant in confidence, I wouldn't mind popping in sometime.
Cheers

I'm not too far from Boondall so could give Maharani's a try to see how they compare.

It seems that they way a lot of the restaurants get going is that originally there were a couple of restaurants who employed Indian students. The students then leave and start their own restaurants taking with them what they have learnt. In the end most Aussie restaurants are fairly similar, but seem to be very different to what BIR is though I've never had BIR, but in looking at how it is done it is different.

I've worked with 3 different chefs from different restaurants, all of them use multiple gravies 'curry mixing' is what they call it, and all of them scoff at only using one gravy. Yet BIR seems to only use one gravy and maybe a masala or two and BIR people swear by it.

What I see as the major difference is that with 'curry mixing' nothing, well, very little is fried at dish cooking time so that toffee aroma that most people are looking for is not something that is dominant in the Aussie curries. What would be interesting is to bring BIR to Australia and see how that fares with the locals.

We are in the middle of setting up a new restaurant just outside Brisbane CBD at the moment, once that is finished I shall let you know.

Hi MM, an Indian restaurant owner told me recently he uses four base gravies  in his restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland. Someone came in as he was talking to me & he ended up back in the kitchen before I had time to find out any more.
Whether it was gravies or sauces/pastes(Rogan etc) he meant I'm not sure, but I got the impression he would have been happy to answer my questions if he wasn't so busy. He also told that all the meats are cooked from fresh, so takes a bit longer getting to the table.

Regards
ELW

Hi ELW,

Interesting, the Ashoka recipes are the closest to what we do here although our gravies are kept quite thick with only a little water added, additional water/stock is added when making the final dishes.

We have 5 main base gravies in use as per below:

butter gravy
korma gravy
onion gravy
vindaloo gravy
vegetable gravy

Each gravy has different whole spices in it and different powdered spices, so when they are combined they create different flavors again. The great thing is, is that I can perfectly replicate them at home in the kitchen, put em in little zip lock bags in the freezer and then pull out as needed.

There's a couple of other minor gravies that are used from time to time as well, but they are the key ones, and the onions are all fried and not boiled in water.

That's interesting about the meat being cooked from fresh, all ours is pre-cooked and retained in the cooking juices. Some of the cooking juices/stock gets added to the dishes when adding the meat in and you get some of the flavor coming through. That way a beef vindaloo would taste like a 'beef' vindaloo. And a chicken vindaloo will taste slightly different due to the stock in the gravy, it tastes different again if no stock is added in as it is just being added to an onion gravy if that makes sense.

Cheers,
Mark

Hi MM, are your gravies being added in full portion amounts(300ml) as per bir average gravies  or in chefs spoon paste amounts?

@stock  ~ yes that makes sense, lamb &chicken karahi from the same place here can be completely different, both in colour & taste. Lamb dishes can  have a lamb stew like flavour & brown in colour whereas chicken can be red & more jalfrezi like

ELW

Hi ELW,

The gravies are being added in chef spoon amounts.

One dish for example might have 2 chef spoon of onion gravy and 0.5 chef spoon of butter gravy, along with a couple of other spices or ingredients. Another might have 1 chef spoon onion gravy, 1 chef spoon korma gravy, 0.25 chef spoon vindaloo paste.

Vindaloo is the simplest, it is just the vindaloo paste, pre-cooked meat with a little stock, and then water added. Let cook and reduce back down. Others might involve frying some mustard seeds, curry leaves, chili then adding the onion paste followed by meat & stock, hot water, and then coconut milk etc.

Boiling/hot water is added to the dish which turns the pastes into gravy, then it is reduced down to the desired consistency.

Cheers,
Mark