Questions about Curry Base Sauce

[merrybaker]

How much difference is there among the various base sauces in terms of taste?? Does it make a lot of difference to use Kris Dhillon's sauce for Pat Chapman's Bombay Aloo?? Isn't it the final spicing that makes the real flavor?? When you find a base sauce you like, do you then use it for all recipes that call for a base sauce, no matter where they came from?? Right now I have packets of Dhillon's sauce in my freezer, along with Pete's base sauce and his vindaloo sauce,?and it's dangerous to open the door!?

[pete]

There seems to be at least two ideas about this
One is that you need a really strong flavoured base which requires little spicing and the other is the "mildly spiced" base.
I think it's probably down to the chef
He knows what base he has got and what it needs to be turned into the curries we love
After all they all seem to get the same sort of result don't they?
I don't now believe that "Recipes vary only slightly from one chef to chef and restaurant to restaurant" as Mr Chapman states
I read, in this forum, that someone else had managed to see restaurant curries prepared.
The chef didn't seem to do anything that we aren't doing.
It MUST be tecnique
I made some curries the other day and got a restaurant result
I tried it two weeks later and the result was back to "home made"
It was good but not correct
It has to be in the timing

[merrybaker]

Pete, I'd think that a mildly spiced sauce would be more versatile.? The final dishes would have less in common.? But so far nothing has been predictable/logical about Indian cooking, so why should this be?

Timing may be the key factor, as you say.? Sometimes the food from our favorite Indian restaurant doesn't taste quite right, and we say, "Must be a different chef."? Maybe it's the same chef and his timing's off.

[stewpot007]

Most of the sauces I have seen when peering over a takaway counter as they cook it seem to be of a very thin consistency and darkish brown in colour.? I am yet to get into a kithchen.?

In Brick lane in London they do curry cooking nights on a Monday. ? its ?25 and you can cook a starter, main and rice dish.
I'll post the link when i find it again.

S ;D

[tempest63]

Have a gander at this before hitting on the Kris Dhillon trail.

http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/ejones/ufdi/faqrec/kd.html

[pete]

That has to be the funniest thing I had heard for ages
I really related to the problems
What we go through for the pursuit of this flavour is madness
It's good to know that I'm not alone
So funny
Thanks for the link
Pete

[Vinda looo]

Same thing happened to me. I couldnt beleive what I was cooking up when I saw the base transform into something that resembled sewage. However after nearly throwing up and throwing out when tasting it.  I stuck to the routine and proceeded to make a vindaloo with it. End result fantastic. Im now well and truly on my quest for the perfect restaurant curry.

[Chilli Prawn]

Yep me too, but most of it went into the bin as I didn't realise there was a stage after sewage and bile ;D