Topic: Chatted to the owner/chef of my takeaway last night

[Mark J]

This is place that has an open plan kitchen and hes always happy to chat to me, I had the Bengali tikka jalfrezi which I have already posted the recipe for on this site.

His English is not fantastic so take the following with a pinch of salt:

They dont use oil skimmed off the top of the curry gravy

They cook the base the day before, and always use it the following day (this I am highly dubious about, he did have a new pot on the go when I was there which he showed me in addition to the rather full one on the stove so it may be true but I cant imagine he would use all the pot in 1 night)

He didn't scoop off gravy from my curry and put it back in the pot (this may of course have been because I was watching him cook)

I asked about the ingredients and cooking the base, he said veg oil and ghee (showed me a massive tub of veg ghee), ginger, garlic, onions, peppers, carrot and spice mixture, think he said coriander stalks also. He said it takes 3-4 hours to cook the base, he also said they use ghee when precooking meat but not in cooking the final curry, he also reminisced about the good old days when he would pour melted ghee over the finished curries?

[ghanna]

hi ,MARK J
thank you
please do not trust them when they say they are using ghee in the gravy , they just want to impress you and show you that they are using expensive ingredients .
please think about what i said ,if they use soild  fat like ghee in the gravy ,it will solidify in top of the gravy  ,but when we see the gravy it is alaways melted oil.
please melt some ghee and leave it for some time in the kitchen ,it will return back to its origanal sold form.
adding ghee during cooking the final curry , yes 100% true , first class restaurant alaways do that.
yes he was honest with you and told you the correct ingredients for the Curry gravy.
thank you MARK J
ghanna

[Mark J]

Hi Ghanna,

There's very little doubt in my mind they use veg ghee, they had an industrial sized container of it right next to the cooking base sauce, Bruce Edwards recipe I believe also had veg ghee in the base.

cheers

[Keith]

Ive been using veg ghee in my base sauce (bruce edwards) and i don't see any of the ghee solidifying when the gravy cools down . Maybe if you use too much . i'm not sure . I do think anything that smells as bad as ghee must be good for the flavour though  ;D
Keith

[pete]

. I do think anything that smells as bad as ghee must be good for the flavour though ;D
Keith

The vegetable ghee I use, smells ok.
I get it from the asian supermarket.
It's made by Kyber and is in a yellowy orange tub with red writing on.
The smallest one I could buy cost about ?3.
It's about the size of half a bucket

[PACMAN]

I have no doubt they use vegetable ghee as i have been shown it in two restaurant kitchens. Vegetable ghee is not expensive and makes it more difficult to burn the ingredients.
This must not be confused with butter ghee which is normal ghee  - this is clarified butter - they hardly ever use this except in pilau and to brush on naans. It stinks and most people do not like the taste of it.
they use kyber vegetable ghee which is odourless and comes in yellow pots and in fact in the previous mailing with the 5 curry kitchen pictures you can see a pot of it below the shelf in one of the pictures.
Vegetable ghee a definite must..

[PACMAN]

i ought to add the vegetable ghee is melted before use and kept warm at the back of the stove in a metal tin.
it does not solidify when the cooked curry is cooled down however it does go back to being solid if not used.

it is the flambe picture by the way it is a yellow pot with ared logo.

The restaurant i was taught to cook naans in totally avoided butter ghee and infact used normal butter to brush on the naans.
They used vegetable ghee in the cooking of the curries at all times and no spicey oil - i was given a sample.
They also used vegetable oils but not i the curries.

incidentally instead of tomato paste at this restaurant they used a blend of tandoori paste and tomato paste
not sure if it had any yoghurt in it as it was the colour of tomato paste.
I do recall asking them about the flambe process and they said it was because they cooked so hot on large flames it was a natural occurence but not a deliberate one and tried to put it out as quickly as possible - however i do think it makes a remarkable difference to the flavour as i cooked a jalfrezi using all their ingredients, methods and guidance and it tasted rather flat - but i had the heat turned down.
I will ask again about the vegetable ghee next time i go in as i do not beliive they tell any untruths. my breads and kebabs were spot on..


paul

[Yellow Fingers]

The next time I eat out I may ask if my selected dishes have any ghee in them, implying that I hate the stuff or am alergic to it. The response, and corresponding taste of what arrives, may tell me something.

George
I was thinking along exactly the same lines. It doesn't tell you what else is in the curry, but it does allow you to rule out at least one ingredient that you might suspect is in the curry. If enough of us did this in a systematic way we could at least rule out or confirm some of the ingredients we suspect are in the restaurant curries.

But this allergy thing set me off thinking as well. Two of the most common and dangerous allergies are nut and shellfish allergies. Now if they are dishing the oil scooped off the curries back into the base sauce pot, then inevitably at some point they are going to mix either prawn or nut in there. So although I was convinced that this was a common practice previously, I now think it can't be. Unless they are in someway able to be very selective, but it all starts to sound like too much effort for a busy kitchen. So I now think that the oil from curries is not put back into the base sauce pot. Ah well, back to the drawing board!

[Yousef]

In a small takeaway on a busy night with 10 to 15 orders i just can not see the curry man scooping off the oil and chucking it back in the curry gravy pot....no way....no chance....not gunna happen

S

[ghanna]

hi,all
when i mentioned ghee i was meaning proper butter ghee.
it is very expensive to buy or make , it is around ?12.50 per 250g.
i buy it from an? Indian lady ,she makes it at home.
she was telling me that she use Chanel? island? butter because it taste nicer, the butter? loose about 33% of its weight when the process finish.
she gave me a recipe similar to the? one that i posted? yesterday in? (its in the oil and technique used? i think? by curryqueen )? but without any? spices or any thing else. Just? boil the butter over very very low heat,it will take about an hour? for the milk fat to settle in the bottom of the saucepan and caramelize

sorry for the miss understanding from my side.
thanks
ghanna