Topic: Deep fried in Butter.

[emin-j]

Our local Indian t/a's all seem to turn out OK curries some better than others and my madras can match the best of them  BUT when it comes to Onion Bhaji's I just can't get close  although I have tried many of the recipes on the forum none come close to our t/a's.
I have just been looking through the menu's from a few of our local t/a and all of them listed ' Onion Bhaji's, sliced onion with spices, deep fried in .....Butter 
I do remember some months ago asking the owner of one of the t/a if it was butter ghee they cooked their bhaji's in and he replied ' no vegetable ghee ' 
Does anyone have any experience of deep frying Bhaji's in butter/veg ghee ?

[Peripatetic Phil]

Our local Indian t/a's all seem to turn out OK curries some better than others and my madras can match the best of them  BUT when it comes to Onion Bhaji's I just can't get close  although I have tried many of the recipes on the forum none come close to our t/a's.
I have just been looking through the menu's from a few of our local t/a and all of them listed ' Onion Bhaji's, sliced onion with spices, deep fried in .....Butter 

I think we've been here before : "butter" is a mis-hearing of "batter" ("a"/"u" are very close or even indistinguishable in some languages).  The Taj of Kent makes the same errors in the reverse direction : "Staff Kazana" instead of "Stuffed Kazana".

** Phil.

[Malc.]

Hi Emin,

What style of bhaji are they making flat or round? I assume that if they are using ghee of any type, then they are likely shallow frying a flat bhaji. It's highly unlikely they deep fry in ghee, though I accept it is possible.

Edit: reading back, I think Phil's explanation is the likely culprit.

[emin-j]

Thanks' Guys,
They are the round Bhaji's near tennis ball size Axe.
Phil your idea is a possibility but find it hard to believe the first three menu's I looked at all say Butter  ,I could email them I suppose 
 

[Peripatetic Phil]

A certain Mr Emin-J wrote this in May 2011 :

As an update to this thread just took delivery of this evenings Curry and it was the Boss of the T/A doing the delivery,I asked if they really deep fried their Bhaji's in Butter ? and chriswg was right  they deep fry Bhaji's in Veg Ghee, I'm definitely going to try this but not sure how long Veg Ghee would last in a Deep Fat fryer out of the Fridge 

This is the thread where we discussed all these hypotheses before ...

** Phil.

[emin-j]

A certain Mr Emin-J wrote this in May 2011 :

As an update to this thread just took delivery of this evenings Curry and it was the Boss of the T/A doing the delivery,I asked if they really deep fried their Bhaji's in Butter ? and chriswg was right  they deep fry Bhaji's in Veg Ghee, I'm definitely going to try this but not sure how long Veg Ghee would last in a Deep Fat fryer out of the Fridge 

This is the thread where we discussed all these hypotheses before ...

** Phil.

Never did try it Phil just didn't fancy cooking in all that veg ghee  but  as the menu's say Butter could it be butter Ghee ? The boss of the t/a I spoke to speaks better English than I do ( not difficult  : and he did say veg ghee but if that is the case i'll have to give that a miss.

[Peripatetic Phil]

but  as the menu's say Butter could it be butter Ghee ?

I really think not.  Butter/batter, Staff[ed]/stuffed, Garabi/gravy and so on are not only possible but (IMHO) quite likely confusions, given that the two scripts involved are completely unrelated and the staff are probably guided by the pronunciation as they hear it to inform their spelling rather than consulting a dictionary each time they are uncertain.  I know I have mentioned this before, but it is pertinent and does bear repeating : a Catalan speaker cannot hear any difference between "Ben" and "Venn" unless he/or she is either a trained linguist or has had considerably exposure to languages (such as English) in which b/v form a minimal pair.  I am reasonably certain (but would have to do some more research before I could assert this as a fact) that in at least some of the Indic languages, both b/v and a/u do not form minimal pairs.

** Phil.

[emin-j]

Thanks' Phil / Axe 

[Malc.]

I was going to add, that, veg ghee is a solid at room temperature which means if it were in a commercial fryer, they would need expensive cleaning equipment to filter the fat when it's in a liquid state i.e. hot. A customer/friend of mine has a chain of chippies that cook in dripping, this too is a solid at room temp. Seeing the trouble they have to go to to filter and clean the fat I really can't see the BIR/TA doing this.

[Peripatetic Phil]

I am reasonably certain (but would have to do some more research before I could assert this as a fact) that in at least some of the Indic languages, a/u similarly do not form a minimal pair.

Yes, if you look at the Wikipaedia page for Bengali phonology, you will see that the BUT vowel does not occur.  Thus a Bengali speaker, on hearing the BUT vowel in English, will (unless linguistically trained) automatically map it to the nearest vowel sound that does occur in Bengali, which is the BACK vowel (/