Topic: Reataurant base v Homemade base - Madras experiment

[Madrasandy]

Hmmm, well Im going to the Indian shop this week and am going to buy all the vegetables from there for my next base, whether the indian varieties will make much difference, but I know the restaurants buy from there, so why not

[fried]

How confident are you that every curry you cook with the same base has the same taste?

I ask because I get a fair bit of variance in tastes even when using identical base sauces and identical recipes. This is especially true of 'Madras' type curries where there are less additional ingredients added.

It'd be interesting to cook 3 off Madras using the takeaway base and 3 off using your own, just to see if the results are consistant.

We've all heard stories about someone going to a good takeaway and unfortunately it was the head chef's night off, and the resulting curries weren't up to scatch. I assume the second chef is using the same recipe as the head chef.

[Petrolhead360]

I'm still of the opinion, previously discussed in a thread, that any test should be compared in a like for like environment.
ie. the TA is cooked for you. The process of cooking yourself will deaden the sense of smell and taste.
This will interfere with the assessment of any comparison.

Compare each dish, TA and home version, the next day etc or get someone else to cook it for you.
After cooking I struggle to identify the subtle differences between TA and Home.
Mind you, alcohol can play with the senses too: Hic!

[Edwin Catflap]

Great thread mate. i have just been reading about Dips base and excluding the chillis it is described as lightly spiced and does have quite a bit of veg in compared to say CA's, which seems to be what you have found, i wonder if this is the  key after all?

Ed

[Korma Chameleon]

I really think there is something in what fried said. For one thing, it is certain that when the head chef is not there, the stand-in chef certainly uses the same recipe, but the flavour difference is obvious. I've experienced this many times in many different favourite restaurants through the years. Much of the final flavour is clearly in the method.

Also, on a personal level, I switched to the BIR base sauce approach about a year ago, and in that time I have found greater flavour improvement from changing the method as opposed to changing the ingredients. In short on that point, improvements came from frying garlic & ginger in both the base and final curry, frying all spices (other than garam masala), cooking the final curry hot and quick and to the right consistency. That last point took me a while to get right; no book can teach me that, only experience.

Another big leap towards BIR came from the right use of whole spices at the right time, such as brown cardomom in saag and star anise in jalfrezi. Small things, big difference.