Topic: The near perfect BIR base sauce ?

[Belan]

I am new to this forum and by no means have I looked through all of the wonderful recipes that have been posted here. I have been a 'curry freak' since I had my first meat madras in Norwich some 30 years ago. Luckily living in South London for most of my life I have frequented some average, good and quite fantastic restaurants. One reputable curry house located in Portland Road SE25;  became a haunt of mine for many years, so much so that I used to play golf (badly I may add) with the owner. After loosing a bet one Sunday (damn my game was extra bad that day  , I had to spend Monday to Friday evening working free of charge in the kitchen ! What a blow What I absorbed in this week was more than I could have ever have learnt from reading any supposedly called 'journeyman curry guru chef' book, mentioning no authors names here but believe me, I have read most of them over the years. I think most of us on this forum understand the vital importance of the base sauce and that topical area of 'just how do we obtain that sweet BIR flavour' when from what we essentially start with is onion, ginger, garlic (and for many dishes) tomatoes ?


Basic BIR sauce - good for Madras and Vindaloo

This recipe is for 6 good size portions:

Ingredients:

One tin of chopped tomatoes
2 lbs of onions (any onion will do here apart from RED)
300ml of vegetable oil (yes nearly half a pint !)
6 cloves of garlic
Ginger to taste ( I recommend a 1" cube)
1 tea spoon of sugar ( as you perfect this recipe you can leave the sugar out)
Salt to taste

Utensils

A heavy pan with a glass or cast lid
Hand blender or food processor
Sharp knife

Method:

1) Peel and roughly chop onions, finely chop garlic and ginger.  Add one table spoon of veggie oil and 3 tablespoons of water to the pan. Now add the onion, garlic and ginger. Heat on hob (with lid on) as low as a heat as possible for around 40 minutes, what we are trying to do here is not brown or fry the onions but literally steam them, so they nearly melt but retain all their moisture. You will need to remove lid and stir the onions , garlic and ginger every 5 minutes making sure that none go crispy round the edges of the pan ! Forty minutes seems a long time but trust me, this is the most important part of the base process. When done, the onions will become almost soggy. Take off hob and let cool for five minutes in pan.


2) Add one teaspoon of sugar to the tined tomatoes stir well and leave for 5 minutes as onions are cooling. Now add tomatoes to pan and blend with hand blender ( if no hand blender available )transfer to a food processor / blender or you can even pulp with a hand masher ! You are after that 'ready brek' porridge consistency and the base will turn light pink.

3) Transfer back to pan and slowly bring to the boil.

4) This is where you add your spices / curry powder to taste, try any generic madras powder with this base you will be surprised by the result. Try to include your usual whole spices too as you would use in other recipes. (Many restaurants will add food colour at this stage). Slowly cook for another 5 minutes stirring consistently.

5) Very very slowly add the oil on a very low heat, stirring all the time, it seems like a lot of oil but the oil is essential and it will be absorbed. In addition, the oil will help extract all of the wonderful spices into the dish. After five minutes you may add salt and indeed pepper to taste but go easy, the flavour has not developed yet.

6) Now add chicken or meat of your choice to the pan ( I suggest raw cubed chicken breast to start with as preparation for other meats vary before adding to base).

7) We now need to cook the dish on simmer for at least 90 mins on the hob, with the lid on for the first hour, stirring occasionally. The last 30 minutes with lid off and yes your hob and kitchen will get splattered, all part of the fun ! You may notice a little oil rise to the surface during the end of cooking, simply skim off as when needed.

Enjoy !

I would be interested to hear any comments. If this recipe proves to be a hit, I may well post some more specific uses for this base sauce and how other dishes can be created by omitting tomatoes and increasing the garlic & ginger etc.

[Curry King]

Hi Belan,

Welcome to the forum and great first post 

Did this recipe come the restaurant you worked in and please post anything else you may have picked up.

Cheers

[Cory Ander]

Welcome to cr0 Belan! 

Im sure we'd all me most interested to hear of any other observations, recipes, etc, you may have from your curry house cooking experience! 

Your base looks to be about as simple as it can get (which is no bad thing, I'm sure) 

I have a couple of questions if you dont mind:

• Is this the procedure used in the curry house that you mention?
• Do they have a number of curry basis for different dishes?
• In step 4, you say to add "spices/curry powder to taste".  Can you be more specific please (i.e. which spices, how much, which brands, etc)?  What does the curry house actually use in its base?
• Which food colouring would they add in step 4?
• You propose adding chicken breasts in step 6?  What other spices are needed to turn the curry base into a madras/vindaloo?
• 90 minutes sounds like a very long time to cook chicken breasts for?  Doesn't the curry house use pre-cooked meats anyway?
• If you just wanted to make a curry base (rather than a chicken madras/vindaloo), would you continue with the cooking sequence defined in step 7 (omitting the meat), or would you stop at step 5?

Apologies for the myriad questions!  Hope you don't mind! 

[haldi]

Basic BIR sauce - good for Madras and Vindaloo

Hi Belan
        So is this a base or a finished meat/chicken curry?
Very interesting post
Thank you
I think I might have been to this restaurant in 1972
It was somewhere near the top of Portland Road
I think a pub called the Ship was quite close

[Belan]

Hi folks, wow a lot of questions and I will try to answer some (in no particular order) as follows:

Yes this method is from what I picked up in the kitchen. The recipe is essentially a base sauce, I only went through the add spices and chicken section so you can see how you may obtain a final result. Chicken breast can indeed be cooked for 90 mins, I actually like to transfer the curry to a casserole dish and cook in an oven(middle shelf) for around 2 hrs at gas mark 3, (just my preference) !
Food colour, well I do not use it but I remember it came in plastic tubs and it looked like those red powered paints I used to use at school ! Lots of e numbers I assume. It was always added to vindaloo and tikka massala.
The restaurant near the top of Portland Road is called the Sitar, I have eaten there a good few times too, it is good but never hit the spot, so to say 
What is added at stage 4 is your call, I have tried various off the shelf powders and spice mixes, I ignore the recipe's suggested on the packet/tin and use the above method every time. I often use Rajah hot madras powder (approx 2-3 level dessert spoons) and I get a great result. I am sure there are loads of spice mix suggestions on this forum, I will be trying some of them with this base! Once I perfect a BIR tikka massala I will post the recipe here, could be some years though

[Domi]

Hi Belan

Thanks for your posts

This recipe looks very similar to the new base sauce posted earlier by the Admin here, although his recipe uses more garlic and states which spices to use, which for me gives a perfect BIR tasting curry. The method is a little different but from what I guess would give more or less the same results

These bases (IMO) are far more likely to be used in BIRs as the businesses are there to make a profit so keeping ingredients to a minimum makes sense to me (some bases I've seen use far too many ingredients IMHO, others just seem to be over-complicating what should be a fairly simple process).

Looking forward to more of your posts ;D

[topconker]

Sorry for asking what should be an obvious question.
When you reach stage 4 and just to make a base, how long do you boil/simmer for?
TC

[lorrydoo]

I wonder who will try this base first?

[mike travis]

Hi Belan,  Welcome to the family. Looks like a good base. I agree with Dominatrixxx about minimum and cheap ingredients. After all they are running a business makes sense to me.  ;D

[haldi]

I will try this when I have used up the other base I have made
This is a very different recipe
The way the onions are cooked will make this very sweet
Ther is no other recipe like this on this site
It is cooked almost dry until the water comes out of the onion
This is going to smell strong during this stage
Open the doors and windows folks!