Hi ihave just been looking through some base sauce recipies and noticed that some use cabbage,I recently bought some base sauce from my local takeaway,  me and others finaly thought that it smelt of chicken stock,but at first my wife and i thought that it smelt like swede, has this ever been used. the carrots are already in there, remember carrot & swede mashed on your sunday dinner mmm.just a thought.

Hi ligs

Each restaurant will have their own additions and they can be almost anything. For example, off the top of my head I can think of the following additions that I've seen in base recipes over the years:

cabbage
celery
mouli (radish)
celeriac
spring onions
potatoes

so swede wouldn't surprise me at all.

Personally I like the cabbage in the base. It bulks it up and definitely adds something that suits my taste buds, but it also MUST have green pepper and carrot in there too.

I recently tried the Little India gravy, kindly filmed and added by CBM, and it was good. I think a few tweeks to add cabbage and green pepper would make it better (for me personally).

Never thought of adding swede, but here in Perth, swede costs more per kilo than chicken breast. 

Cabbage is cheap and plentiful, so that suits me.

I've also tried boiling up a chicken carcass in the base, but can't say I noticed too much difference in the finished curry.

Also, I unwittingly served up a mushroom bhajee to one of our veggie friends, and it was only a few days later that I realised it was the chicken carcass base gravy that I'd used............OOPS!! I still haven't told her!!

Ha ha ha

love it - was it my base

best, Rich

I'm pretty certain it was Chewy's base, as I had cooked it in the pressure cooker. 

Hope she doesn't read this, she'll kill me!

Mick - i still think its great!!!! I'm a believer in using chicken carcass always as a stock

best, Rich

Quote from: loveitspicy on July 15, 2012, 02:54 PM
Mick - i still think its great!!!! I'm a believer in using chicken carcass always as a stock

best, Rich

Hi Rich

Do you mean, you boil up a chicken carcass to make a stock to add to curries, or you boil it up in the base?

I like the sound of boiling it up seperately, then adding to the finished curry dish.

Your thoughts/ideas/recipes would be welcomed.

Mick
I cook my base with carcasses in a different pan etc - link to a thread i posted is here
https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=7962.msg70149#msg70149

I will not make a base without chicken stock - unless its going to be a bunch of veg curries then i use a couple of veg cubes and onion and carrots in water boiled up

Hope this helps

best, Rich

Thanks for the link Rich.

I don't know how, but I haven't seen this thread before.

I will try this as my next base for sure, I have a chicken carcass in the freezer that I didn't know what to do with.........well now I do.

Mick

Everyone makes a base their own way- its my way and it works really well - with boiling the carcasses you get the nice oily sheen in the water form the chicken which when added to the base ingredients - boiled further then liquidised (stick blended I prefer) it transfers the sheen to the final curry you make - which helps on presentation.
The stock helps create more of a fuller flavour - some might say they cant tell - but it is there!!

Give it a go let me know how you get on - it makes for a very easily adaptable base for all curries

best, Rich