Topic: As folks say in this part of the world….

[Robbo141]

Y’all ain’t cookin enough!  Come on gang, cook some curry, post some pics, give me inspiration.
I’ll be doing my 2nd dish using the Taz base this week.  Haven’t decided which curry yet, leaning toward dhansak.

Robbo

[Peripatetic Phil]

I have purchased the chicken, I have printed (but not yet laminated) your 1933 recipe, but I was too tired to cook this evening so microwaved for one hour at the lowest possible setting a Lidl/Aldi golonka lookalike (I forget what they called it — maybe Schweinshaxe).  It was OK, but my horseradish (an essential accompaniment), despite being freshly purchased, was a complete and utter waste of time — not a trace of heat, and barely any hint of flavour.  And this from a whole root, not that jar rubbish.  Sigh.
--
** Phil.

[Robbo141]

That is harsh Phil.  28 deg C here today so am enjoying a cool Riesling to combat the heat.  Not sure if I ever saw it in the UK but my supermarket here has horseradish white cheddar that is beautiful.  My own cheddar is 3 months old today, still aging in our converted beer fridge. Trying to talk the missis into letting it go a full year.
Bought a couple naan, 4 samosas, a huge piece of fat ginger and about a pound of fresh Thai chilies today from my local Indian grocer. Time to make the homemade ginger garlic paste and get cooking this week.

Robbo

[Kashmiri Bob]

Gearing up for some BIR cooking sessions.  Liking the look of Chef Din's output.  Also sorted out the Manchester Abdul's Shami Kebab recipe. 

Bought one of Asda's Aluminium 26 cm Karahi pots.  £10, click and collect; reviews quite well.  Will pick it up later today.  Think I will drill a hole in the lid.

Rob    

 

[Unclefrank]

Working all this week but next week the week off, got around 40 curries, at the moment, to cook for customers, Dopiazas, CTMs, Dhansaks, Madras, Baltis, Bhunas, Tawa, and some specials i have on my new menu.
I would post pics but i haven't been able to post for some time now says file not supported which is a jpeg file so don't know, using the CR0 image hosting.

[George]

I am part way cooking a chicken tikka massala which will probably take me 2 days to complete. It was going to be my main meal of today but I ran out of time, so had a bowl of cereal instead. The recipe is by Anjum Anand. I thought I'd try her recipe after I was quite impressed with the flavour of 'her' Spice Tailor pack called 'Original Tikka Masala'. The pack includes 45% onions but her own recipe includes no onion at all, so I decided to add one. Against my better judgement, I added 8 whole green cardamons and, surprise, surprise the part-complete sauce tastes too strongly of green cardamon. Still, I always learn something when I follow a recipe like this. That said, some people here appear to cook more curries in a month, than I cook in a decade.

[livo]

George, keep going.  I'm sure you will be rewarded for your efforts.  A Chicken Tikka Masala is most likely a 2 day trip for anybody who does it properly.  Marinate the Tikka one day and cook it and the curry the next.  I guess it depends upon which Tikka marinating process you choose.  Shortcuts are possible if you're prepared to marinate in the afternoon / evening and do the dish next day.  A single day starting in the morning to cook for the evening is possible, but you'll be rushing.  I've done all 3. Syed's Tikka can be done in short time while CT's double marination process is at least overnight.  I've had CTM that's taken 3 to 4 days to eventuate into a meal on a plate.

The alternative is to use a recipe or Masala mix that promises the dish immediately, or within a few hours anyway. We all know this isn't the real deal, but who cares?  This isn't to say that the dish will be bad and it probably won't be if your doing everything right.  I've had quite a few curries that are done with expediency and have been exceptionally good.

[George]

George, keep going.  I'm sure you will be rewarded for your efforts. 

You were right and I am grateful for your encouragement. This morning, I bought fresh ingredients to try making the 'base sauce' again with fewer green cardamons. The new attempt is now postponed until the weekend, after I decided I needed to eat something half decent this evening. So I took the sub-standard base sauce and mixed it roughly with some butter, cream and a few other ingredients to make a rough approximation of the final sauce. I also grilled some of the chicken tikka and added it to the sauce. It's definitely more akin to Makhani sauce, rather than a BIR style chicken tikka masala. It looked very good and tasted far better than I expected. So maybe I was wrong to judge the final sauce on the flavour of an intermediate ingredient.