Topic: Why we cannot produce that missing taste ?

[ghanna]

Dear Keith
Thank you very much for your encourgement and understanding.
ghanna

[ghanna]

Dear Curryking
Honestly i didnot understand what do you mean in the first line of your comment, it starts woot!!!!.
Could you please explain it more clearly.
Thanks
ghanna

[George]

I have two concerns here:

1. Leaving the basic sauce out overnight and for several days without refrigeration in a hot kitchen, which never concerned me until I heard it may well contain chicken. That said, touch wood, I have never been poorly after  eating at any UK Indian restaurant.

2. Misleading our vegetarian friends.

[Mark J]

BIR's arent guilty of anything unless they actually say their dishes are suitable for vegetarians.

Bombay aloo - potato curry, where does it say in the menu 'suitable for vegetarians' ?

[pete]

The takeaways are doing nothing wrong.
The stock is a standard cooking procedure and nothing actually bad is in it.
It makes me a bit uncomfortable but that is a personal thing.
I do have a few problems cooking raw meat (it can give me wobbly legs!)
But this style of cooking is like your grandma used to do.
It is of a previous generation.
Passed along chef to chef over five decades.
If you want food without these methods, then there is a growing number of new style indian restaurants coming along.
There is one near me and they frown on the takeaway style meals.
But, I believe, their food will not have "the taste" because a bulk of the flavour comes from the added stock.
So far, it's only me and Ghanna, who have made the jelly.
Ghanna didn't believe it made the difference.
I did.
Someone else have a go.

[ghanna]

Dear George
The curry gravy always stays on top of the cooker it is never refrigerated,when the kitchen staff arrive at 4:00pm ?the first thing they do is boil the gravy , switch ?on ?the tandoor ?, start pre- cooking the chicken ,lamb and defrost the prawns in boiling water chopping the coriander leaves , onions,garlic, ginger.......etc, make the rice,defrost some onion bahja in the microwave, defrost some samosa ( may be some other time i will tell in details about samosa and onion bahja )
The gravy pot ?stays on ?top of the cooker say from midnight until 4:00pm the next day i.e for 16 hours or may be 2 or 3 hours less
No fridge will take the big pot ,it is really big.
It does not finish in one day ,may be 3-4 days
During the restaurant hours of business the kitchen is very very hot it can reach up to 100 F specially if the tandoor oven is on.
This is an idea about the kitchen

Thanks
ghanna

[Keith]

Pete . no one is critising your method . we all know you are trying everything to create the missing taste .
Anyway i made a madras tonight and fried a couple of the fat green chilli's (chopped up finely ) with the garlic at the start and along with all the usual spices for madras and i have to say it wasn't far off the taste . Like the green pepper in the base sauce ,the green chilli has a certain ZING to it . i might be way off the mark but it was bloody tasty ?;D ;D
Keith

[ghanna]

Hi Mark J
It is a very good point , just surf the internet and look at some of the Indian restaurant menues.
Very clever restaurant owners ?never mention the word vegetarian curries ,they always call the curries by their names, you know way ? Because if any trouble happen latter ?they don't want to face the hand of the law in this country.
Some innocent restaurant owners don't know this trick and call their curries vegetarian curries ,or may be it is vegetarian any way.
Thanks
ghanna

[PACMAN]

ghanna
i think you will find that any decent restaurant/takeaway will have an enormous walk in fridge at the back somewhere and store everything in this including left over base sauce and unused cooked chicken, bread dough etc.
I have been in these walk in fridges in two restaurants.
i witnessed the boiling of the bones in one restauarnt and there was not a scrap left out of the fridge at the end of the day.
The whole place was meticulously clean and would have passed any health inspection with flying colours.

paul

[pete]

When I first moved to Nottingham in the eighties, I used to go to a indian vegetarian restaurant sometimes.
I never thought about it at the time, but the curries always tasted home style.
Totally vegetarian=not the restaurant taste.
It's gone out of business now.
I have been told many times that you can't reproduce the restaurant taste at home.
Apart from being very fiddly to make, there is a great deal of skill involved too!
I take my hats of to these chaps, who can turn ordinairy ingredients, into something quite extraordinairy.
I just hope getting the curry gravy right is the most difficult part!!!