Topic: BRITISH-IAN FOOD IN THE MAKING

[Peripatetic Phil]

Earlier this week I made a second batch of Syed's chicken tikka as planned, on this occasion substituting Laziza tandoori paste for Patak's (no other changes).  My wife made one of her increasingly rare trips home from the hotel to bring me some shopping essentials, and she and I shared two skewers of chicken tikka (with Nirshaan chapati and home-made mint sauce, as per previous post).  We both agreed that the Laziza version is better than the Patak's, so I shall feed this back to Syed and seek his views.

** Phil.

[curryhell]

.. am going to do My Special 'KILLER PHAL' Very soon.

Now this I am looking forward to  It's been a long while since I had a good rectum wrecker lol

[curryhell]

Here is a bir curry journal YouTube is the wild west

Nicely put ELW. A typical wild west saloon, full of many chancers who think they're really skilled players 

[Peripatetic Phil]

I was trying to work out what to cook this evening (basic chicken curry, bhuna chicken, chicken Madras) and felt tempted to try the Madras again just because it had been so disappointing last time.  But before committing myself, I thought that I would compare the two recipes (basic chicken curry, chicken Madras) to see if I could identify the difference that had caused me to love one and be somewhat disappointed by the other.  So I put them up side-by-side, in Word.  And I was staggered (nay, flabbergasted) to find that, as far as I can see, they differ only in the amount of Syed's curry powder used.  ¹/₂ tsp for the basic curry, 1 tsp for the Madras.  I would be really grateful if another member could compare their transcriptions of these two curries and let me know whether they can identify any other substantive differences.  In the meantime, I think I will make a bhuna !

[Update] Which indeed I did.  And it was excellent.  Made to spec., apart from a few deviations : (1) 120gm pre-cooked chicken instead of 100gm (five pieces just did not look quite enough [1]); (2) spices added before dilute tomato pur

[Robbo141]

I will do this check Phil and report back.  I keep a spreadsheet that notes each ingredient used in a particular dish, as I search for consistencies in what works for me.  Eg recently I noticed the dishes I rate highest had no whole spices flavouring the oil in the very beginning.  Of course, my techniques are not finely honed enough to be able to eliminate that variability, but have to start somewhere.

Robbo

[Peripatetic Phil]

Many thanks, Robbo.  In the meantime I have put Syed's four most basic recipes (chicken curry, bhuna, Madras, vindaloo) into an Excel spreadsheet (attached).  The units used are those specified by Syed¹, but in the "FOAM" columns ("Fixated On Accurate Measurement"), these are normalised to ml or mg.  Conversion is by way of a lookup table, so if you don't agree that one ladle = 80ml, for example, or that one chef's spoon = 3.5 tablespoon = 52.5 ml, you can make one change and all cells expressed in that unit will be automatically re-computed. What I found remarkable is the similarity between the quantities for each of the first three recipes.

Spreadsheet attached, masquerading as a .txt file; simply save as .xlsx and open in Excel. or (if your browser allows) open it directly in Excel and when Excel says (paraphrase) "This is not a text file

[Robbo141]

Excellent, thanks Phil.  Although somewhat skeptical on first moving to the US, I am now fully embracing the concept of the

[Peripatetic Phil]

Excellent, thanks Phil.  Although somewhat skeptical on first moving to the US, I am now fully embracing the concept of the

[Robbo141]

When skill, knowledge, experience and a good eye can

[Peripatetic Phil]

Oh, your measuring spoons are expressed in vulgar fractions.  The spreadsheet variant that I was developing for you won't be of much help, then