Some BIR chefs do still make their pastes from scratch. It may be a more widespread practice than we think. I know one chef in particular and the only ready-made he uses is pataks balti paste. Took me a while to figure out what was going on. When I first saw the pastes (lined up in various pots) I thought, yup, pataks. There were after all several catering size jars on the kitchen shelves. I did note the ones the chef used had asian bay sticking out of them, but I dismissed this as insignificant; figured he was just tweaking the pataks, somehow. Plus, in this kitchen, asian bay also went into pretty much everything you can think of.
Later however I learned that the pastes (kashmiri, tandoori, pathia, and others) were all made by the chef himself. He explained that the jar pastes were just unsuitable for making most curries, especially kashmiri. Too "strong". He went on to say that the pastes were expensive, not in terms of the ingredient prices, but they are extremely time-consuming to make. I gather the process he uses is somewhat more involved than Chris' demo. It requires many bagar stages, possibly over several days. I know the chef quite well now and did query the reason for all the pataks jars in the kitchen. Answer? "Tandoori chef". He has actually promised to show me how all the pastes are made. One issue though, he is fairly confident that even when shown it will be very difficult for me to reproduce the flavours consistently. I'll have a good go though. Would love to get to grips with the pathia paste. A touch of this (really just a touch) goes in the chef's jalfrezi dishes. Mind-blowing curry!
All good stuff though. Very much looking forward to Chris' book. The little edges/tricks/secrets that some of the chefs have are slowly being recognised/identified, which is nice to see.
Rob
Topic: How to make Indian Kashmiri Masala Paste, one you're not supposed to know about! (Read 31444 times)