A must in an indian curry

[JerryM]

it's all the members who deserve any praise.

by everyone reading the posts and adding their constructive thoughts we are our collectively much more inspirational much more likely to eventually get to the BIR taste we crave.

back to business

i boiled the last onion for 5 hrs. i used 1 litre of water as i thought all this boiling would make 400ml dry up long before the end. in fact i had to add further small quantities during the period.

observations:
1) after 2 hrs liquid was no where near as sweet as when the 400ml of water was used
2) after 3 hrs no real change
3) after 5 hrs the onion had started to break up into a mush and there was very little liquid remaining. the liquid and onion mush both tasted sweet.

as this point u would think that if u boiled a base longer than say 2 hrs it would become sweeter.

i don't believe this to be the case. i have just made a batch of saffron base using in place of the fresh onion all the test batches of onion. i am aiming to reclaim oil on this base and have as a result boiled/simmered the base for an extra 3 hrs on top of the normal cooking period.

the sweetness is no different to the saffron bases i've made previously.

the base incidentally is the best i've made to date (closest to what i believe to be BIR base). i think the extra oil, extra salt (actually the as spec 3 tsp), cardamom and extra cooking time have made the jump closer to BIR base. i think in reality i've probably better interpreted the making of the base more a kin to BIR. will post more details in the saffron post.

conclusions:
1) the ratio of liquid to onion is crucial to amount of sweetness
2) the longer boiling (greater than 2hrs) does not produce extra sweetness
3) the cooking technique has a big part to play (oil reclaim)

[JerryM]

have added pic of the 5hr boil

[Yousef]

<<
Stew, I would think that 40 minutes frying onion in that much oil would start to 'deep fry' it. What sort of temperature did you use in the pre-fry stage? What was the final consistency/colour of the onions before proceeding with the regular Saffron recipe?
>>

Just boil them in 750ml of veg oil for 40 mins, you are aiming for what JerryM had in the bottom left photo.  Caramalised and sweet, then just chuck in the rest of the ingrediants, top up with water to cover and carry on with the base recipe.

I do not see an issue with an indian takeaway using vast amounts of oil to boil their veg in then topping up with water after the initial stage.  In fact they would probably just chuck all the veg in the pot in one go with a hugh amount of oil, boil and spice, blend and finally add water to get the consistency they require. 
Perhaps my next base will be made using this approach as it would be fast, sweet and spicy.

Stew

[JerryM]

was able to buy the jaggery easily.

it tastes a bit like the sugar u would expect to make toffee with.

it's got a chance for me (quite different to common brown & white sugars)and will try out in my next base.

i will add as per the ifindforu base recipe - at the cream coconut stage ie towards the end

[JerryM]

i finally plucked up courage to add the jaggery to the base.

i added after the base was cooked and was starting to cool adding a 15mm cube at a time until i felt i'd got just a hint of sweetness (used 4 off 15mm cubes ie 30mm cube in total).

i used my std LB spice mix to cook the curry. the as spec spice mix contains quite a lot of sugar. i found i'd overdone the sweetness having sugar in both the base and spice mix. i would take the sugar out of the spice mix for future which i feel would make the sweetness right.

i appreciate jaggery might not be strictly BIR and it did not affect/improve the actual taste of the base other than the sweetness. however i feel it avoids the sort of "sickly" taste i find with white granular sugar.

so in summary i intend to use in future as standard as this will allow me to remove the white granular sugar from my spice mix which i feel would be better in terms of BIR approach (help with the frying).

[Derek Dansak]

interesting post. i tasted a real bir base, and it was savoury with no trace of sweetness, or that elusive toffee taste we crave. i firmly believe the 'taste' comes not from the base, but what is done at the cooking stage of the dish e.g madras etc. They use much larger quantities of salt , tumeric and spice mix than we do on this site. perhaps 2 to 3 times more per dish!  a big tablespoon of salt per dish! and loads more oil. i am hoping to get my second demo soon. 

[TikkaMik]

Hi Derek,

A tablespoon of salt per dish, I'm struggling with that,
I know if I was to put that amount of salt in any curry, whether or not there was any salt in the base, would make the dish pretty much inedible,,

Mick

[Derek Dansak]

Hi, i know its slightly unbelievable, but thats what i saw. they had 6 tubs. one was tumeric, one was quality rock salt. they used both very liberally. the other tubs were chilly powder, spice mix , disected coconut, onion, green pepper chopped. the reason for having a separate tub for tumeric is that dishes like bhoona and madras require different quantities of tumeric. therefore they add tumeric in the spice mix, (like we guys do on this site) BUT they can , and do, add tumeric separetely if the dish needs it. i observed them adding this half way through the dish sometimes, to boost the flavour. this was for a boona dish. he explained that the madras is the best to learn, as once you know this, the boona and rogan josh are basically the same with slight variations in amount of spice mix , tom puree, and tumeric. i really need several more demos + a real bir gas cooker. hopefully i will get another demo soon and pass on the tips here. DD

[JerryM]

Derek,

you?re very lucky

i tasted a real bir base, and it was savoury with no trace of sweetness

my interest in "sweetness" came from side by side tasting my "madras" with a TA madras. there is a clear difference - the TA having a sort of hint of sweetness more than mine which is not coming from the onion.

i did mean "a hint" in my post as i do agree savoury (or as I call it Moorish) is what we are aiming for and it's unlikely many BIR's use jaggory due to the cost.

[Derek Dansak]

Hi Jerry, it was lucky tasting a real bir base gravy. Although i did get a strange look from the chef as i poured a ladle of base gravy over the rice! lol. It cleared up a lot of the mystery and endless pondering about what a real base is ilke . better still this bir is fantastic, and is the best in the area, run by a nice bunch. The chef just said use loads of onion when making the base. I now make safron base with a few more onions than the original recipe (sacriledge!). I actually had a hint of that moorish taste the other day in a really basic madras attempt. but i am buggered if i can repeat it