Topic: Jb's takeaway base gravy

[littlechilie]

Great photo you snapped there Chewy
The Tarka we are talking about is I am guessing the same one we use to infuse the flavour for our  Tarka Dal sizzle.
I believe Chewy is right about the amount here as I use a lot of garlic to sizzle my Tarka Dal giving me a great deep moorish garlic flavour.

[jb]

Really good fun JB, did you hang around and get offered any Iftar goodies.

Was this better for you than the Zaal visit, i.e. a one to one tutorial with these cooks.

Just to back up your report about adding a Garlic tarka, which is old school BTW and not a lot of my locals do anymore.
I took a phone pic of a 30lt restaurant base last night, you can see the sliced garlic floating on top of the oil, before the base was blended.



Although you say only one clove of Garlic, sliced and fried (Tarka) to finish,
even in a 3kilo base I would use at least 5 cloves of Garlic to get the flavour into it.

Anyhoo, what level would you rate this TA's curries and have you tried any of their speciality dishes.

Good Post
cheers Chewy

Hi Chewy,I got to take home the chicken curry and tikka massala I cooked,as well as the paste and gravy I made.They gave me some pliau rice and also knocked me up a peshwari naan.At one point I was chatting about all things tandoori and the chef was to trying to get ME to make the peshwari naan...I thought I'd better leave it to the expert.

Not sure about 5 cloves of garlic,just even adding one has given the base an extraordinary flavour,never seen this done before by the way.I've had a few curries in there,very nice indeed.I have my eye on a few specialities and I'll try and get a demo on how they are done.Was it better than the Zaal??  Yes although the Zaal experience was good I had the opportunity to watch the Chefs cook the curries as the orders were coming in.They thought it was highly amusing that I was in their kitchen cooking a base gravy.As the Manager pointed out,before the recession they used to hold quite a few(home style) lessons,but this was the first time he'd been asked about base gravies/massla paste etc...He was very impressed and said he couldn't wait to pass on his knowledge to someone!!

[Secret Santa]

Not sure about 5 cloves of garlic,just even adding one has given the base an extraordinary flavour,never seen this done before by the way.

Me neither jb. I've added garlic as a tarka to curries and obviously to daal but adding it at the base stage would never have occured to me. I wouldn't have thought such a small quantity would make that much difference and like CT would have opted for more. I can't wait to try it now but I've got a freezer full of base so it'll have to wait a while. It's all great info though so keep it coming...and passing on making the Pehwari naan..ya wuss!  ;D

[fried]

Since I wrecked my last base by letting it catch on the bottom (and then accidentally scraping it off) , I'll give this a go when I'm back from holiday. i like the garlic tarka idea. What does the coconut block add to the base? it's something I've never used, seems popular in some regions.

[noble ox]

I made this base this morning it reminded me of the Glasgow base to begin with, when finished it was a huge step up the league...very Bir I will knock up a vindaloo later using  it and report the result
So far the best base I have made .....got my tail -wagging  ;D

[Zap]

I made this base this morning it reminded me of the Glasgow base to begin with, when finished it was a huge step up the league...very Bir I will knock up a vindaloo later using  it and report the result
So far the best base I have made .....got my tail -wagging  ;D

This is incredibly encouraging - I was going to make another base as an experiment, but I think I'm being sold here to also try this.  I had a lot of success with the Glasgow base, and then an improvement with a clone-base.

Jb, questions for you - can you post the recipe to make the Chicken Curry?  I'd like to have a dish that pairs with this base to use as a first test and I'm not sure if I'll get around to making the massala paste quite so soon.  Also, did you get any hints at their mix powder, or maybe have a suggestion for which one might be closest for the time being?  I'm almost out of my present batch, so I'm trying to decide what I should be making!

Thanks again for your generous sharing of all this excellent information!

[emin-j]

Well done jb excellent job 
So what can we learn from this new base ? Have we been under cooking the onions for all this time  :
The Glasgow base talks about the onions turning 'milky' and I must admit I did get good results from this base.

[Secret Santa]

Well done jb excellent job 
So what can we learn from this new base ? Have we been under cooking the onions for all this time  :
The Glasgow base talks about the onions turning 'milky' and I must admit I did get good results from this base.

It's definitely one of the 'secrets' but we've known about long cooking to bring out the natural sweetness and flavour of the onions for some time now. Savoury curries don't have sugar added (if you're doing it right) because that comes naturally from a properly cooked base.

In fact one of the other forums has a 'melting base' along these lines which goes back a good few years now.

[Zap]

I think that one of the biggest flaws in some of the previous reporting of TA/Restaurant recipes is using time as a metric for cooking.

A home range will NOT achieve the same results in the same time as a restaurant.  Now, if the recipe is substantially scaled it might be possible to get somewhat close.  But just like cooking anything to temperature instead of time, I think relying on the tastes and visual clues is bringing us closer to results that are the same as the TA.  Eventually it is possible to standardize the recipe back to time-based format with enough experience in a new environment (different range, different pot, different size, etc.).

[fried]

Weren't some folks laughing about the 'melting base' fairly recently?