Topic: Multiple Curry Base Sauces

[elimilech]

I'm a Londoner living in NZ and have recently started by BIR cooking journey. All the reading I have done in books and online say that each restaurant cooking BIR food use a single base gravy. Here in NZ I have found two different Indian restaurants that use 3 different bases out which serve as the base for all their dishes. And I don't mean three variations of a similar base - but three actually different base gravies. Then the other day I asked my local Indian TA and they confirmed they have 3-4 bases. Of course I asked for a hint of their recipes, and while they declined to give them they did say these different base sauces are online. But I haven't found them yet. With that in mind, I have two questions I'd love answers to:

1) Do British BIR TAs (as opposed to antipodean BIR TAs) use multiple base gravies?

2) Does anyone know where to look to find multiple Base Gravy recipes, with accompanying curry recipes?

Thanks,

Elimilech

[curryhell]

Hi elimilech and welcome to the site.  In my limited experience of going into BIR kitchens, compared to that of Chewytikka and Currybarkingmad, I have only seen  one main base gravy being used.  This may be supplemented by adding the likes of red masala sauce which is also cooked up on a large scale.  I can't think of anything else that could be considered a gravy 
However, according to panpot's posts the Ashoka chain in Scotland use different gravies.
Hopefully other members will be able to add their experiences to the thread.

Re. the use of multiiple base gravies, have a look at the threads below posted by Masala Mark.  Check out his profile and look at his posts.  He posted a great deal of info on AIR

http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,4923.0
http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,4922.msg47616
http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,4950.msg51522
http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,8382.0

[BradM]

I have a book called Curry Curry Curry by Ranjit Rai and he describes 3 basic regional sauces - Moghul, Madras and Persian. His recipes are not BIR recipes though but maybe your local restaurants use something similar to these but my suspicion is that they maybe using the nut, tomato and onion gravy bases that Masala Mark has documented and linked in Curryhell's post.