Topic: Jb's takeaway base gravy

[christo]

Just made a batch of this up, first base where I have cooked the onions so much. Used 10 cloves of garlic.
Looking forward to using the base soon

[jonnie63]

[...] Following your recipe landed me pretty much bang on my favourite dish from this restaurant - actually I preferred the one I cooked !!! [...]

Jon, do please share your recipe !
** Phil.

Hi Phil - sorry for being a year late to reply to you !

For the base gravy its pretty much the same as the recipe at the start of this thread ie JB's.

Small differences but I do not think they are that important.

I use more peppers (twice qty) red and green and I fry them in ghee rather than adding to the boil - I noticed once that peppers develop quite a strong favour when fried.

I am very generous with the fresh corriander stalks ( well leaves + stalk to be clear which is what I understand people mean by stalks ) - the batch I just set off I doubled up on the corriander - I waited until the first bunch was well cooked and first tasted the liquid and then chewed some of the cooked corriander and reckoned I could go with more - not eaten this last batch at the time of eating. If you are like me and lacking natural talent then sometimes I think the key is to cook the basic recipe through quite well and then test things out and perhaps add more of the flavours you like if you are able to pick them out in the mix - thats why I picked out the corriander on its own and tasted against the liquid. The one thing I think we have to remember about recipes from restaurants is that those guys have cost constraints that people cooking for themselves may not have - there may be some ingredients the pro's would double up on but the price they sell the finished dish at they perhaps cannot always add as much as they would if it were cheaper. 

I dry roast and grind corriander seeds and cummin seeds in place of the powder - I tend to be a bit generous on that.

I use fresh garlic and ginger rather than the pre-prepared pastes.

I cut the onions only into 1/8ths no dicing - the larger chunks seem to be better placed to stand a good long cook without any sticking.

But the most important thing is that I took JB at his word - I cook it for ages with enough water to make sure there is no sticking and I do check with the spoon once in a while.

My wife makes something with beef now and then - she cooks it in the slow cooker - the taste is very strong, much stronger than you would ordinarily be able to get from beef - I think some foods just develop more taste the longer you cook them.

There is nothing in JS's recipe I had not tried before - I think one of the reasons it works so well is this thing about cooking the onions into oblivion, I think the last time I did this I left it on a fast cook for one hour and then a final slow cook for over four hours - it offered almost no resistance to the hand blender.

Do listen to others though - I am definitely not a natural - the only reason I got anywhere was because I tried and tried and tried and read so many different recipe's - like I said I am fairly close to Lister - favourite food kebab and curry - its only addiction that got me to my modest achievements

[Peripatetic Phil]

Many thanks for the update, Jon (what's a year between friends ?) but now somewhat confused