Lamb samosas vs Ex-hot chicken naga viper

[Kashmiri Bob]

Couple of pics of Friday's efforts:


Lamb samosas




Ready-made Ramzam samosas deep fried and reheated in the oven.  Stuck with whole cloves and served with a fresh mint/garlic dip.  Very tasty samosas.  Ramzam are popular with BIR TAs hereabouts. I think they are better than the Zam Zam brand, but still no where near as good as the pricey Humza samosas.  Got a good deal on these though.  Just a few weeks left on their use-by date, and a local Asian shop was selling them off at 2 bags for 3 quid.  40 samosas.


Ex-hot chicken naga viper


On the bubble. Just about there. Chicken cooked from fresh.






Had some base left over for a chicken madras (bottom)








Nice finish/texture.  Just over 1 cs of sunflower oil plus a little spiced oil.  Experimenting on both dishes here with kesar mango pulp.  Amazing stuff. Another great tip from Chewy.


Kesar effect.  Hope I can reproduce this. 






Viper chicken served with a chapati




Most probably the hottest curry on the forum.  Scary amounts of ex-hot chilli powder and bhut jolokia/naga viper chilli extract.  The GM added (to finish) consists of dried Trinidad scorpion butch T pepper, naga ghost pepper, and mace.  Truly a scorcher.  Very tasty, until my head went numb.   

All good fun!  Reckon I'll stick with the madras in future.

Rob 


No artificial colour in either dish.

[Secret Santa]

You've really got the presentation down to a fine art Rob. Which curry do you feel benefits most from using mango pulp?

[fried]

I always love the look of your curries. Fantasic colour, but there always looks like so much oil.

I'm really interested in the reasons for this. Are you adding spiced oil at the end? are you filtering off the oil? Or do you just like oil?

Absolutely no criticism, I just happened to be looking at the photos on the front page and mine always come out looking exactly like Garp's Garlic chilli chicken with a few flecks of oil.

Which base do you use?

[Ramirez]

Great pictures. Presentation of the samosas is good, but those curries look delicious - both are making my stomach rumble.

[curryhell]

All looking very good Rob as usual  Shame on you with the commercial samosas though  You just cannot beat home made. Sadly few restaurant bother to make their own anymore  Probably why I never order samosas when in an indian nowadays.  I suppose it's convenient and the regular non discerning punters are happy with them.   I for one am not  :
Nice to see you've taken your "hot" curries to a higher level by adding extracts  Do they add anything other than heat?  I must be getting old as i would be quite happy to settle for that tasty looking madras with a a lump of naan 
Very curious about the use of mango pulp though.  What affect did it have on the flavour compared to not using it?  Given my limited menu preference I'm not sure to what extent, if any, it's used down this neck of the woods.  Just out of the kitchen having cooked about 4 kilos of blades tikka.  Having done pre-cooked chicken in the week and CBM's lamb today, I'm well stocked up for at least a couple of months.  So should be reporting back on a few dishes i've earmarked for trying    I also made CBM's tamarind sauce the other day.  Looking forward to using that in my original North Indian Special.  Makes a superb dip for samosas and onion bhajis when thinned down.  Will be trying it on the troops in the near future to get their comments.

[Stephen Lindsay]

great looking food Rob!

[Kashmiri Bob]

I always love the look of your curries. Fantasic colour, but there always looks like so much oil.

I'm really interested in the reasons for this. Are you adding spiced oil at the end? are you filtering off the oil? Or do you just like oil?

Absolutely no criticism, I just happened to be looking at the photos on the front page and mine always come out looking exactly like Garp's Garlic chilli chicken with a few flecks of oil.

Which base do you use?

I think it's more down to technique as opposed to amount of oil, fried.  The quantity of base (and how thick/thin it is) also plays a part. To be fair I am usually quite liberal with spiced oil/stock from pre-cooks, but I'm looking for restaurant depth of flavour.  Generally restaurant quality dishes don't come swimming in oil (sometimes they do) but neither do mine, when they are plated.  OK I do like a good slick occasionally  ;D.  These two efforts are a bit different though, with the kesar mango, and really new to me. Fresh chicken. All is not quite as it seems in terms of oil.

Keep meaning to post the base recipe I use, but it's nothing overly special.  2-2.25 kg onions, 1 red and 1 green pepper, a couple of carrots, about 25 g coconut block, 2 cans of plum tomatoes, 120 ml sunflower oil/15 ml veg ghee.  3 stages. Boil, G/G bagar, separation.  About 6 l of base diluted to 8 l.  Quite light.  But technique is the key.  TA vs restaurant?  I don't know to be honest, but these chefs are a clever lot. 

Here's a similar madras I made tonight.  A bit more mango, a bit less oil, not much.  Made in half the time, but with over twice the amount of base gravy.


As it might look in the TA






Same dish. 20 mins after being covered with the cardboard lid.  As it might look on delivery.





Very nice. A fine curry. But if a chef makes a "special" from my experience it will look (and taste) more like the madras pic posted earlier.  I'm still working on it.

Rob       

[fried]

Thanks for the reply Bob, I'll need some time to digest all the info.

[Kashmiri Bob]

All looking very good Rob as usual  Shame on you with the commercial samosas though  You just cannot beat home made. Sadly few restaurant bother to make their own anymore  Probably why I never order samosas when in an indian nowadays.  I suppose it's convenient and the regular non discerning punters are happy with them.   I for one am not  :

Humza aren't too bad Dave.  Minimum 60 % meat.  Keep finding lumps of spud in the ones I've bought recently.  Don't mind spuds but a lamb samosa should be mainly lamb.  Long time also for me since I've had a non-ready made samosa from a TA/restaurant. The pastry was about an inch thick on the last ones Top home-mades are available from the Bengali places on Coventry Rd in Brum though. Must be 95 % meat at least.  Pretty spicy and very tasty.

Rob 

[goncalo]

Looks fierce Bob! Sounds like you are doing your best to get any left overs from the cold out of your system. Your usual standard