Topic: Pakistani base gravy

[Kashmiri Bob]

Made the Pakistani style Bradford base from Julian's new book last night.  Not prepared any dishes with it as yet, but here's a few first impressions and pics for anyone interested.




Ingredients to recipe spec.  I used freshly ground whole coriander.  My cumin seeds were far from fresh, so opted for powder from a newly opened packet. For the garlic just rough-chopped 3 (large) cloves. Will have to check the approx' weight of the chicken (carcass half) but it's a big 'un.  3 L base.  Used a 5.9 L stock pot.





Went with 1.5 kg of onions. Bringing up to the boil here.





After about 30 mins.





Off the boil after close to 2 h.  Longer than indicated in the recipe, but I had to pop out.  Had a taste at this point and felt there was too much chilli heat.  The chicken carcass had broken up somewhat; easy enough to fish it all out with a slotted spoon.  No problem finding/removing the big whole spices.  Reintroduced the black cardamom seeds (nice!).  Could only find one of the green cardamoms.  Had a chew on its husk and it didn't taste too bad at all, so wasn't that worried about blending the rest.  May bag the whole spices next time.





Blended.  Noticed here my hand-blender had difficulty coping with some of the peppercorns.  I'll crack them first next time.  Had another taste.  Absolutely superb taste (as far as bases go).  Nicely balanced, nothing jumping out.  Spot on chilli pepper heat.  This seems to be a sweet base, very sweet.  I've recently changed my onion supplier so will have to check if this has anything to do with it.  I did think my class 2 Dutch jobbies looked  a bit "class 1".  The base is very thick at this point (as per the book) and apparently ready to use after cooling, with a little dilution.  But I wanted to see how it behaved back on the boil, particularly in terms of oil separation. 





Diluted the base with water to a consistency that (from experience) should lead to decent separation from a base.  Rolling boil after about 30 min here.  For anyone new to home curry making the surface oil becoming apparent (left side in the pic) is a good omen. 





After another 30 mins boiling.  I'm happy with this.  Done.





Left over night to cool (with the lid on).  Very thick indeed when cold, and back down to 3 L, or thereabouts.   A lucky guess.




Oil stirred back into the base.





Ready for freezing.


Looking forward to making a few curries with this.  First impressions of the base are good.  I'll be diluting it with water (lots).  Also thinking balti. 

Rob 

[Secret Santa]

I made a couple of bases recently where I added several chicken drumsticks which when cooked I removed and returned the skin to the pot and a bit of the meat. Disappointingly it made no apparent difference to the taste of the base, but it does thicken the base I found. The meat was quite delicious although I wouldn't use it in a curry - that was never the intention.