Topic: Bagar help please

[spadge]

When making a small base (roughly 8 medium onions in size) what recipe would you use for the bagar? when is the best time to add to the base? anyone got a tried and tested method? also what not to do!

Heres the base  recipe I generally use, can anyone tell me if I'm going wrong.

Boil onions with good pinch of salt on high heat 1.5 hours
add half of a carrot (sometimes a similar amount of white cabbage)
4 cloves of garlic
1 inch of ginger
300 ml of veg oil
1 Tbsp of butter
half of green pepper
2 medium vine tomatoes
water
10 coriander stalks and leaves - I've left out the spice mix details because I'm sure it will be wrong.
All above ingredients added and simmered for a good hour before blending. This is then cooked until the oil rises which I seperate off for further use.

Thanks for the advice in advance

[Stephen Lindsay]

Hi spadge

Not quite sure what you mean about adding a bagar because I take it you mean tempered spices cooked in hot oil and your recipe doesn't contain any reference to spices. In any case I usually start by base with the oil, heat it on medium heat then add the vegetables, garlic, ginger, salt and spices and I allow them to cook gently n the oil for 15-30 minutes. Then I add boiling water and let it all simmer for whatever time it needs, be that another hour, two or three. I am not fastidious about the latter. After that the base is sort of made, minus the tomatoes. I use tinned and put them in for the last 15-30 minutes..

Some people feel you don;t need the frying stage with oil and advocate putting the oil, water etc. in at the same time and who am I to argue otherwise. People will also suggest leaving the tomatoes till last or they will become bitter and that's what I do.

Abdul Mohed is an Indian Restaurant chef who posted here for a while and in his booklet which I bought he has an optional supplementary recipe which he calls a gravy (base) enhancement. This consists of taking a separate pan/pot, then frying garlic/ginger paste in hot oil, adding spice mix, then some tinned chopped tomatoes, and finally adding some water, boiling it all for 15 minutes and adding to the previously cooked base at the end.

Perhaps this is what you were looking for?

tomatoes

[spadge]

Thanks Stephen,
                      Indeed I did mean the fried spices, was just under the impression this was called the 'bagar' but I really am not too sure....  Perhaps someone could verify this and any additional methods / ideas.

[Secret Santa]

As far as I know bagar just means seasoning so it could apply to many things. I'd probably add 1/2 tsp of garam masala and 1/2 tsp turmeric for a lightly spiced base which can be beefed up in the curry cooking process.

I think your base method/recipe is as good as the many other variants you'll find on this and other forums. The butter (assuming you mean butter and not ghee) seems a little unusual but it can't harm. The only addition I would suggest would be finely chopped garlic fried in oil or ghee until brown but not burnt. Add it in right at the end just before you blend.

[Sverige]

I'm not sure how much your 8 onions weigh, but my first reaction on reading your ingredient list is what a lot of veg you have for only 8 onions. Videos from restaurant kitchens often show huge stock pots filled with onions and not much more than half a pepper and a couple of carrots thrown on top, so you really have to keep in mind base gravy ingredients should be 98/99% onions IMHO.

Butter is a new one on me, but if you like that flavour in your base then go for it. Have never seen that in another base recipe though.

The bhagar (fried part) doesn't have any fixed rules as far as I can see, just keep it in proportion and remember it's a base so shouldn't be strongly spiced and if it's turning red then you've got way too much tomato.  I always tend to look back on videos from real restaurant kitchens and check my proportions are in the right ball park, as the trouble is there's a kind of Chinese whispers effect with people copying someone else's recipe from a forum then making their own changes and over the generations of changes you can end up with quite a departure from what the restaurants are using. An example in my opinion is the way a lot of folks seem to scale down the amount of onions and water to suit a smaller pot but still want to add as much other veg as they saw in that huge pot in the video from the restaurant kitchen.

Like I said, I'm not sure how much your 8 onions weigh, but it seems to me you're making a pretty small batch of base and so "less is more" should be the order of the day to keep the other ingredients in proper proportions.