Topic: how much has your signature sauce changed in last 2 years?

[Derek Dansak]

Hello all

I thought I would throw this question into the mix the get the latest updates

Personally I have finally got a taste which is my own and not just a blend of other peoples recipies.
2 years ago the taste was inconsistent, and lacked anything unique. I was essentially just copying
other peoples ideas with minor tweaks.
Now i am cooking more confidently, with a base sauce which is my own creation, that changes a step at a time.
It needs more work, but has come along way.
I guess its still at the level of a lower standard bir takeaway. But in
Another 5 years i think it could surpass many local TAs.

For me arriving at this position was down to:
1) Finding a base sauce which works for my own style.
2) Tweaking the base sauce 1 stage at a time. Then seeing how this effects the final dish
3) Trying as many spice mixes as possible from cr0. Finding 3 that work best for your base.
4) realisation that base sauce is everything.

By this i mean the base sauce colors the whole dish. This is why bir guard their base sauce so secretly.
The reason all the bir recipe books so far are crap , is the base sauce is no better than ours.
In fact usually worse.
 I expect many cro members have a better personal base sauce than any
base sauce from a bir book?  what do you think ?

[Stephen Lindsay]

Derek

I've had good results with BE, Ashoka and Taz (with BE spice mix) and it is the latter I have stuck with. I wanted to give my attention to becoming familiar with a set of ingredients and recipes and spend as much time cooking as possible. I'm cooking 2 curries 5/6 nights a week so I think I've achieved that. I also think my internalisation of curry cookery has increased, along with my confidence and consistency of results. I am therefore very happy with the dishes I turn out and my g/f continues to validate this. We are becoming less and less impressed with what is available from local restaurants. Recently she said my Brinjal Bhaji was the best she's ever tasted - and the honours for this go to curryhell, whose recipe I use.

But back to base(ics). Last year I posted a question here along the lines of should I develop my own base? I decided I should but didn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak. I therefore decided to start with the Taz base and tweak it. I decided to call it "Golden Base" and have been using that alongside Taz. It's really just a Taz with some minor alterations but hey they are my alterations and hence they deserve a title I guess.

So I can relate to your sense of moving forward and taking stock of where that has taken you up to now.

[spiceyokooko]

what do you think ?

I think you've just confirmed again what I've come to believe - that it's not about ingredients, but about what you do with those ingredients - the technique of cooking them.

This is a theme I've seen repeated on here many times - the perpetual search for that missing secret ingredient, the constant twiddling of spice combinations and base sauce ingredients etc.

BIR base sauces are a closely guarded secret? How so? Many restaurants have given a precise breakdown of not only the ingredients used within them, but how they're cooked and not only that have shown a video showing those ingredients and how they're cooked. So how exactly are they a closely guarded secret? In any case what's so special about the base sauce? Almost all the myriad of different base sauces on here use the same ingredients - onions, water, oil, garlic/ginger, some savoury vegetables to balance the sweetness of the onions - green capiscum, carrots, cabbage, potatoes etc. Then the tomato paste or pureed tomatoes and spices. They all follow that basic ingredient list. Why do they all follow it? Because that's what nearly all BIR's use in their base sauce. Where's the secret?

The secret is down to the cooking technique - it's no more complicated than that. This is precisely why so many people get such different results even when using the same basic set of ingredients, because how they cook those ingredients varies so much.

Bruce Edwards once said in his opinion he could probably produce an acceptable curry dish by just using a spice mix of ground turmeric and salt and pepper, I think he's probably right too. You can produce a pretty good saag bhaji by using just turmeric, salt and pepper, fried onions, garlic, chopped green chilli's and some base sauce.

I think we over-complicate things unnecessarily.

[Salvador Dhali]

what do you think ?

I think you've just confirmed again what I've come to believe - that it's not about ingredients, but about what you do with those ingredients - the technique of cooking them.

This is a theme I've seen repeated on here many times - the perpetual search for that missing secret ingredient, the constant twiddling of spice combinations and base sauce ingredients etc.

BIR base sauces are a closely guarded secret? How so? Many restaurants have given a precise breakdown of not only the ingredients used within them, but how they're cooked and not only that have shown a video showing those ingredients and how they're cooked. So how exactly are they a closely guarded secret? In any case what's so special about the base sauce? Almost all the myriad of different base sauces on here use the same ingredients - onions, water, oil, garlic/ginger, some savoury vegetables to balance the sweetness of the onions - green capiscum, carrots, cabbage, potatoes etc. Then the tomato paste or pureed tomatoes and spices. They all follow that basic ingredient list. Why do they all follow it? Because that's what nearly all BIR's use in their base sauce. Where's the secret?

The secret is down to the cooking technique - it's no more complicated than that. This is precisely why so many people get such different results even when using the same basic set of ingredients, because how they cook those ingredients varies so much.

Bruce Edwards once said in his opinion he could probably produce an acceptable curry dish by just using a spice mix of ground turmeric and salt and pepper, I think he's probably right too. You can produce a pretty good saag bhaji by using just turmeric, salt and pepper, fried onions, garlic, chopped green chilli's and some base sauce.

I think we over-complicate things unnecessarily.

Couldn't agree more. In fact (taking the saag bhaji example), you can make an excellent dish with even fewer ingredients by using just turmeric, a little mix powder, salt, onions and garlic (this is for a dry dish, so no base sauce required, chillies as always are an optional extra. You can also omit the mix powder, too. I've seen BIR chefs using just turmeric as the main spice for this dish.)

The success of the dish, as you say above, is 100% in the cooking technique. Get it wrong and your left with sloppy, soggy bowl of blandness. Get it right and you have a delicious dish of flavoursome, smokey, salty, subtly spiced spinach laced with the sweetness/savouriness of perfectly caramelised onions and garlic.

It's a cliched phrase, but so often in this game less is definitely more...

[Derek Dansak]

Sounds like you guys are thinking along the same lines to me. It makes me wonder how similar or different our basic madras would taste.  very different i would bet. 

 

This is a theme I've seen repeated on here many times - the perpetual search for that missing secret ingredient, the constant twiddling of spice combinations and base sauce ingredients etc.

    totally agree with this comment.  I guess its a natural part of the quest for any serious cr0 member.

[Stephen Lindsay]

Derek

I think we would each produce a different Madras in the same way that we would produce a different omelette, scrambled eggs or cod in batter.

Steve

[madmatt]

I would say our base sauces are better than many BIR examples, purely down to the fact that, lets face it, the time and effort we put into developing and improving our bases, must be more than many BIR's do!

There probably some BIR's out there who's base originates from CRO!

I rarely have a meal in a BIR(and never a take away!) that I think I couldn't replicate, thanks to CRO.

As for the original question, I was hooked on CA's base, but since getting a pressure cooker I now am a firm fan of chewytikkas 1hr base.either way, just as said above, due to different equipment and timing, brand of spices etc, everyone's base is in its way unique, and I have even found when I run out of a spice, my next batch of base can be quite different to the last effort(sometimes better, sometimes worse) but one thing stays the same, I alway enjoy making it on an evening, with a bottle of plonk on the go!

Matt

[Unclefrank]

For me it's having an opportunity to visit around 6 BIR's all local to me and observing the way they cook, their technique, having already made three dishes from one of my local TA already and having 7-8 friends taste the curry, who do visit the restaurants/TA's regular, and again listening to what they say.
Speaking to the chefs and just watching really, then going into the kitchens and just looking, smelling, with the odd question asked but not too many.

Taz base for me is great, the technique the dishes are cooked is almost the same way, as is the CA base i know they are cooked in two different ways but not every chef cooks the same way, which i must add has been my favourite for many years.

 I am trying to get the technique of cooking like they do in restaurants, which is why i had a wok burner, 4.3Kw, on my new hob this does really kick out some power.

I have said this before in another thread, i build up my dishes in stages.
None of this would have been possible without the help of this site and people willing to share their recipes and knowledge.

I mainly keep to CA, TAZ and one from another site but i don't really change much to the original recipes because they really do work for me and what i want to achieve.
 I used to have one folder with recipes now it's like a library and i love it.

[Derek Dansak]

Unclefrank , visiting 6 bir kitchens is a new record isn't it !!     

[Secret Santa]

Six kitchens and nothing to report! Or did I miss it?