Topic: Talked about base sauce with take away owner and chef

[Mark J]

OK, I have been back to the guy and this is what he said:

He adds only 1 heaped cooks spoon of tomato paste to the base, I was amazed it was this little so double checked this twice but this is what he said. I asked if he added any other form of tomato and he said no, just this.

He adds a whole bunch of fresh coriander.

I asked if he uses chicken stock in the base and he said yes!, he says he adds it after the water, ie not the day after its made. I asked him if it was the stock or the jelly and he said not the jelly.

As I was leaving he said to tell him how I get on, I told him a few people have made this and one guy even plans to make the 30 onion full version and this tickled him  ;D. His comment to us all was that we just need to keep practicing 


YF - I will see how he makes a biryani next time I am there (I will have to order it to watch him cook it)

[pete]

That's fantasic Mark.
Thank you so much, for such a detailed report.
I am glad to see, that I wasn't crazy, and chicken does go into the base.
No one else had been able to confirm this.
I guess the "taste" either comes from the chicken stock he uses, or because he makes in large quantities (which I don't understand, but might have to accept)
The next question to this man could be "how does he make this stock?"
If that is the "taste" then you will have completely solved the riddle.
When I added the chicken jelly to my base, it brought the flavour very close to what I wanted.
Maybe yours (and I'm hoping) will be exact.
Thanks again

[Mark J]

Its a pleasure to return the favour Pete  ;D, next time I will ask him how he makes his stock

[Yellow Fingers]

He adds only 1 heaped cooks spoon of tomato paste to the base, I was amazed it was this little so double checked this twice but this is what he said. I asked if he added any other form of tomato and he said no, just this.

I always thought that the base recipes that added a lot of tomato were wrong because people who have seen the restaurant base sauce have generally said that they are yellow or bright yellow and the more tomato you add the more orange/brown the base becomes, so this seems to confirm what I thought.

YF - I will see how he makes a biryani next time I am there (I will have to order it to watch him cook it)

Thanks Mark, I look forward to it.

[DARTHPHALL]

Nice one Mark, i`m really confident we are going to get there in the near future & its nice to see a chef being so helpfull for a change.

[DARTHPHALL]

One more thing i will be cooking the 30 onion recipe next week so wish me luck people(all that peeling I'm not looking forward to !!)

[pete]

One more thing i will be cooking the 30 onion recipe next week so wish me luck people(all that peeling I'm not looking forward to !!)

If you are going to all that trouble, it might be worth waiting for the chicken stock question.
It might really change the flavour a lot
Thirty onions is not good news!

[George]

One more thing i will be cooking the 30 onion recipe next week so wish me luck people(all that peeling I'm not looking forward to !!)

Good luck to you if this is what you really want to do. I suggest, however, that the "R&D payback" is likely to be a lot greater by cooking 15 batches of basic sauce, comprising two onions each, with 15 lots of variations.

[Yellow Fingers]

Good luck to you if this is what you really want to do. I suggest, however, that the "R&D payback" is likely to be a lot greater by cooking 15 batches of basic sauce

I'd have to agree, a 30 onion batch is one hell of a big one to waste if there's only perhaps one or two key ingredients missing. Mind you that's probably only a week's worth of vindaloos for Darth?

One more thing i will be cooking the 30 onion recipe next week so wish me luck people(all that peeling I'm not looking forward to !!)

Darth you could top and tail the onions, wash them and bung them whole into boiling water for several minutes to soften the skins, they're easily peeled and chopped then (thanks to Ghanna for the original idea)

[blade1212]

This great news Mark.

I reckon they don't mess around making stock in the majority of BIRs - it takes too long and I bet most of them use frozen chicken breasts  rather than cut up whole chickens.

For me, we have a base that is as good as we're going to get it. I found the celery was the killer ingredient. Hopefully using less tomato will add another dimension to it. So let's go with chicken stock cubes or the liquid stock to get going here. With all that then, surely 95% of the 'the taste' has got to be the final dish. 

In the meantime since we are so close, I would like to propose we do a Saturday curry fest where everyone makes a version of this base and reports back results. We need a score out of 100 for :

1) the base
2) the final curry
3) 'the taste' factor

along with the final dish recipe.

come on guys, you know it makes sense......

PS Mark, along with the biryani next week.... please get a lovely madras or vindaloo !!! I'll pay you ?10, honest