Topic: Despicable!....but Anyone had a Rummage?

[Ashes]

Hi Cory!

Its difficult to snoop around in swedish bins as they are usually kept within a locked "trash room" but im inclined to agree with many people here, that the secret lies more in techniques and equipment than in certain products which produce a BIR style flavour.

There are a few restaurants in Stockholm that produce a fantastic indian curry albeit not a typical BIR one, Indian Garden is garanteed to produce consistently good food, the tables are so close together than on occasions you are forced to stand up to let people pass. Thats if you can get a table

Indian Garden http://www.indiangarden.se/

Regards A

[Cory Ander]

Sorry guys, maybe I?ve lost (or am losing) the plot! 

I appreciate all that you say about the importance of techniques in replicating ?that BIR taste?.  However, it seems to me that the ingredients simply MUST play an equally important role, and that the secret to unlocking ?that BIR taste? requires using both the right ingredients AND the right techniques (the right techniques will require the right equipment, of course).
 
For example, I went through a spell of roasting and grinding whole spices to make my own garam masala, curry powders and curry pastes.  My friends were well and truly impressed!?. :

BUT!?the curries, that I then produced, were simply too overpowering (and the flavours were not sufficiently diffuse).....compared to BIR curries, that is.

AND!...I thought that I?m damned sure that your ?run-of-the-mill, decent, high-street, (Bangladeshi), BIR? would not do this because it?s too time consuming and therefore expensive!

SO!....it was out with the roasted and ground whole spices and in with the commercially produced, off-the-shelf, garam masala, curry powders, curry pastes and powdered spices!

As I stated in another thread, my ?simple? (ha, ha) aim is to recreate  BIR (i.e. run-of-the-mill, decent, high-street, Bangladeshi) curries (with ?that taste?) at home.  To do so, I try to use the ingredients and techniques that I believe these restaurants use.  For me, the ingredients include the following:

• The cheapest possible (but decent) oil (as well as limited use of ghee)
• Bottled curry pastes and commercially prepared curry powders (as well as use of some fresh whole spices)
• Commercially ground spices (seldom roasted and ground fresh whole spices)
• Bottled garlic and ginger purees (as well as copious amounts of fresh)
• Tinned tomatoes, purees and pastes (as well as limited use of fresh)
• Tinned lentils (as well as dried)
• Bottled and dried mint (seldom, if ever, fresh)
• Bottle lemon and lime juices (seldom fresh)
• Dried and powdered fenugreek (seldom, if ever, fresh)
• Desiccated, tinned and creamed coconut (seldom, if ever, fresh)
• Powdered chilli (as well as fresh)
• Artificial food colours??
• etc?

I was hoping that this thread might solicit "eye witness accounts" of these types of ingredients being used (or otherwise, of course!)

By the way, I'm certainly not saying that other varieties of curry are in anyway inferior, or less desirable; it's just that it is not my personal aim to produce these other types of curry.

Maybe I?m being anything BUT purist CP? 

Thanks for you inputs!  A great debate with very valid and interesting points of view....as always! 

[CurryCanuck]

Perhaps this begs the question - is there a truly unique BIR taste or perhaps just a variant on a common taste . Of all the Indian restaurant kithens that I have been privileged to observe in over many years , they all tend to do " it " a bit differently . Is it ingredients , quantities , re-claimed oil , heat . technique or all of the afore-mentioned ? There are restaurants that do not employ the use of a base sauce ( re-inventing traditional recipes ) yet claim to be authentic BIR . You could list the cooking ingredients employed by numerous restaurants and basically draw a blank when it comes to a common theme because the list would be both varied and endless . I guess the bottom line might well be , when you find a taste that you prefer , try to both improve and reproduce it on a regular basis .

[Chilli Prawn]

Hi CP!

I posted this a while ago, if you havent tried it, i would recommend you do - This is probably my favourite garam masala, very different from the norm.

http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=491.0

Regards Ashes

Thanks Ashes, I will give it a try.  The Urad (dhall) I think is there solely as a latent thickening agent. 

Happy cooking
C P

[Ashes]

It could be.. im sure it has some flavour although it might be very subtle. I would normally suspect its there to bulk out the packet so as to make as much profit as possible, but i doubt thats the Hari Kristna styley. If it is there soley as a thickening agent it would be better to leave it out. Anyway it smells the business and gives a "creamy" spiceiness to indian food.

Ashes

[Woks Up]

Errrr.......with respect, I thought this particular thread was about the ingredients that people have seen BIRs using?

So what has a discussion on the role of urad dhal in some obscure garam masala recipe got to do with it?  Shouldn't this rather be in a different (more relevant) thread or in a separate thread? 

[Ashes]

If youre going to moan Woks Up pls use the correct thread, this is reserved for dustbins and urad dahl 

[Chilli Prawn]

Correct, Ashes.  See my last post W U, the Forum is evolving all the time and as the great Guys & Gals who run this site see the trends etc., they add new areas, e.g. Hints, Tips etc.  Indian cooking is a great adventure, and like all adventures we get off the beaten track and sometimes lost  .  Hopefully now we will be able to focus our input to the correct areas, but I do hope that we might digress occasionally and then put the topic in the right place; free thought is a great way to creativity, whether in this case it is after the Birvinci Code of BIR cooking or traditional recipes.

Risquer heureux
CP

[Curry King]

Hi Woks Up,

I'm afraid this forum has always been like this with long threads going totaly of track but hopefully none of the important information should be lost.  This paticular group "Lets talk curry" is for just that, chat, so you should really expect the threads to go of track slightly as it is for general curry related talk.  Recipes and other important info should be posted to the relevant groups and linked to here, if you take a look at the posting rules it does actually explain this:

http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=237.0

ck

[CurryCanuck]

Perhaps the information highway requires a traffic cop to direct the info on the site....are we getting too big !