Re: The taste we desire can only be achieved by cooking in quantities.
This is not true. I have achieved 'the taste', and reporduced perfect imiatation takeaway dishes 3 times now. I've made curry every night for the last month (really), with the quest of hitting the nail on the head. I've done it three times - what I can't do is reliably reproduce it. As a result, I'm unable (so far) to identify exactly what it was bout what I did one time that wa right, and what was not etc.
Last nights was my best attempt so far, without doubt. As ever, I used Dhillon sauce ( was a bit short on onions so topped the weight up with a pepper and a stick of celery), I also added 3 heaped teaspoons of sugar into it. I followed the general principle of Mark J's curry house viewing.
I now consider the pre fried onions to as important as the base sauce. I chop 3-4 onions very finley - some finely dived, some finley sliced into small strips. I fry these gently in plenty of oil, with a bit of base sauce, and a desert spoon of *cinnamon* on them. I slowly fry them for 30-40 minutes, until they are totally soft, see through, and sweet.
My cooking procedure was as follows : hot oil -> stiry fry garlic paste -> heaped ladle of onions -> creamed tomatoes -> spice (only 1/2 a teapsoon) -> fenugreek -> salt-> chilli powder -> Ladel of curry sauce -> 1.2 chopped tomato-> sprinkling of coriander -> 3 more ladles of curry sauce -> 3 mins cooking or so. I popped in the pre cooked meat, put the whole thing in a takeaway dish, srpinkled it with coriander, put the lid on, and set it aside. I went to get a beer from the offy, and ate the curry about 1 hour later, after heating it in the micro wave. It was a 100% spot on replica of chicken Bhuna, as served by the Bengal Spice, Oxford.
The things notable to me about my method this time were
1. Generous helping of very well cooked onions, falvouried with cinnamon - I used a lot more of these than in previous recipies
2. I flambed the pan a LOT (still dont know if this makes any difference, will have to conduct an experiment)
3. Smalll, (tiny) amount of spice used. I get the feeling that it didn't matter too much what the spice was; this time I used a regualr 'curry shop masala'
4. Tomato
5. Much more consiervative amount of chopped corinader used than I usually have.
6. Leaving it for 30 mins, leacing the house, coming to it fresh - Im sure this gives the dishj time to mellow and cool out, the flavours to come through in it.
I'm really going to nail this over the next 6 days. I intend getting exact measurments, cooking times, and eventually photos.