Topic: My local restaurant base sauce

[poppadom_pete]

Hi folks, Ive been eating curry from the same curry house in Newcastle for a good few years now but just recently got talking and approached the subject of base sauces. Anyways tonight he was kind enough to take out 10 minutes to write the recipe down. As you can imagine I was realy excited about this, hearing it from the horses mouth and wot not. I was expecting some great revelation but its much the same as most of the recipes we allready know, its still nice to hear it first hand though and I will certainly be giving it a try.

Here goes.

The spoon that was used was a cooking size spoon and I would say roughly 4 normal tablespoons in size, I will try and find a pic of a similar sized spoon later.

1 pot (Id say about 4 litres) filled with onions, onions only need to be half chopped.
Half fill the pan with water. More water can be added to make sure the onions are covered when cooking.
Add 1spponfull of garlic and ginger puree which is a 50/50 mix.
Add half a spoon of salt.
Now boil this for about an hour.
He dscribed it as being ready when the onions could be cut with a spoon. ;D


He then said add about 10 spoons of vegtable oil, after about 2 minutes you should be able to see the oil rise.
Then add 3/4 of a spoon of tomato puree.
1/2 of a spoon of turmeric.
1/2 of a spoon of curry powder.
1/4 of a spoon of chilli powder (optional).
1/4 of a spoon of corriander powder.
1/4 of a spoon of cumin powder.
A little bit less than a 1/4 of a spoon of garam massala.

Cook this for 20 minutes making sure it is stirred on a regualr basis.

Then blend and cook for a few more minutes to finish the base.
He uses a handheld blender which he just puts into the pan so he doesnt need to take the mixture out to blend.

I questioned him about brands of spices and he said it realy wasnt important.

He did say it was going to be difficult to write down as he never realy measure stuff and did it by eye, which is to be expected. So dont take the measurements as gospel.

He did go on to talk about making the actualy currys but not in great depth. He did say that oil was heated to which he added garlic/ginger paste and whatever spice mixture was used making sure the spices were actualy heated to quite a high temprature before adding the gravy. Again stuff we allready know but nice to hear first hand.

Well I think thats about it but if theres anything Ive missed please let me know.

Cheers.

Pete.

[Yousef]

HI poppadom_pete,

Great post thanks for the taking the effort to do this.
The only thing i would do from experience now is make a paste of the spices you mention and fry it before adding to the onion mixture, just helps release the proper flavour:-

1/2 of a spoon of turmeric.
1/2 of a spoon of curry powder.
1/4 of a spoon of chilli powder (optional).
1/4 of a spoon of corriander powder.
1/4 of a spoon of cumin powder.
A little bit less than a 1/4 of a spoon of garam massala.

Thanks again.
Stew

[poppadom_pete]

Hi Stew, thats exactly what I though and I did actualy question if the spices should have been fried as a paste first and he said there was no need.

Somthing that I found a bit odd was the stage at which he blended the mixture, it was near enough at the end of the cooking process. Usualy when I make a base its cooked for at least 30 minutes after blending. Probably nothing in it but Im still gonna give it a shot.


Pete

[Curry King]

Great stuff, we need more of these first hand encounters!

You mention that it's not cooked again after blending but wouldn't he just leave the pot simmering away all night ready for use anyway so it's effectively being cooked again then?

The guy sounds like every chef who will actually tell you something, nothing is measured and its all done by sight.

[poppadom_pete]

You mention that it's not cooked again after blending but wouldn't he just leave the pot simmering away all night ready for use anyway so it's effectively being cooked again then?

He just said to leave it on for a few minutes after blending and that was it.

Although from my knowledge of BIRs I would have expected he whould have probably left it on simmer and I would thnk this would add to the flavour.

Im probably going to try this one tonight, although Im still a bit stuffed of last nights ceylon so Ill see how it goes. Ill post results here and get some flicks. 

[parker21]

hi pete
  great post did you get the recipe for the ceylon as i know curry queen was after it or did you see it cooked if so maybe you could post you observations
regards
gary

[poppadom_pete]

Hi Gary, I didnt get any recipes for the currys or see any of this cooked Im affraid. Ill approach the subject next time Im in, hes a realy nice lad so hopefully he will be of more help. Im actualy realy supprised he took the time out to write the recipe down, he'd be out of buisness if I manage to recreate his cooking, Im his best customer.  ;D

[DARTHPHALL]

Excellent post Pete,nice to see more recipes getting posted "Bloody marvelous" ;D.

[Ian S.]

Fantastic to get another recipe from the horse's mouth, Pete.  Thanks very much.  I wish I could do that.

Pete -  a quick question which I hope is not a stupid one:  Is this for a full size batch of sauce such as he uses in his kitchen, or had he scaled it down for you?

It's just that I have a four-litre pot and there's no way it would be enough for an evening's worth of curries at a takeaway.  But then, my chef's spoon holds just two tablespoons worth (when level), so the amounts of spices you've listed don't seem overpowering for four litres' worth of sauce if I was to use that.

Just trying to work out the amount of onions needed compared to the rest.

Thanks Pete

Ian
--

[poppadom_pete]

Ian before writing it down he asked how much I would be making and I just looked through into the kitchen at what looked to be an industrial size ghee/oil tub which I would say was about 4 litre and said "about that much". So something we could realisticly replicate at home, I realy should have asked what capacity the tub was but Id say 4 about litres. And I would definatly think that thats a much smaller version of the quantity he makes for the restaraunt.

As for the spoon size I would say his would equate to about 4 normal tablespoons, Ive had a quick look on google Image search but can find anything that looked about the same size, Ill have a better look later.

Anyways first thing I done when I got home from work today was to get this one on the go and the results were very good, Id say very similar to KDs base and a few others Ive tried on here. Very sweet, which I think may be to do with the salt content. He mentioned to me a while back that he used lots of salt and when making this base and when I first put the salt in I thought it was way over the top, far to salty. After the hour and twenty minutes of cooking it just tasted a lot sweeter than any other base Ive tried. Im sure I recal a topic or duscussion on here about salt having ome kind of chemical reaction with the onion or something like that. I may be mistaken but I definatly think it sweetened it up a lot. All in all I would say this was a very good base, very similar to KDs but from what I remember from making the KD base this one seemed a lot less fuss, very straight forward.

If anyone gives it a try please post your results Id be intrested to see what people think of it.

Cheers