Newbie SnS Base & Madras, and AST Jalfrezi

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Hi everyone, awesome site, been learning a few recipies from here over the summer and moving into a new house gave me the chance to try them out on a large scale. I understand why restaurants use a base now - i made four different curies at once and the longest thing to cook was the rice  ;D

The SnS Base:
I used SnS as it has always seemed very straight forward to follow, well written and has given good flavour accross a range of curries. I was cooking for 11 so doubled the quantaties of the base and added more oil so it had 500ml oil in 5.65l of base, however I couldn't reclaim that much.

Pictures:
1. just after adding all the ingredients
2. after blending
3. after having left it to simmer for a few hours. I took the scum off and reclaimed some oil after this but didn't get much. I left it in the fridge overnight and added more water before reheating it the next day, which seemed to help compared with the first day but still didn't get as much oil out as I put in!

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The SnS Madras:

I made a chicken and a king prawn madras to suit various sensibilities regarding meat (women are such picky eaters sometimes  ;D). I kept the pan very hot throughout and every time I put another ladle of base in it would sizzle. Fantastic.

Pictures showing:
1. Oil+tomato paste+ginger paste+garlic paste (and a cheeky red chilli finely chopped)
2. with added spices. i was choking at this point, lovely!
3. the base is added
4. with prawns (i forgot to take a photo before I served. 11 hungry people were very impatient, in a good way! 

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AST's Jalrezi

Again I made two versions, lamb and chicken. lamb jalfrezi makes my mouth explode in orgasm, but some of the girls only eat meat if it's chicken, booo! I made it a little milder than i would usually (only 1/3 of the green chillis), as the madras was for those with a more robust palate. Anyway here you go:

1. onions, peppers, garlic, chilli's etc
2. plus spice mix
3. with a little base

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The results:

20 minutes of complete silence followed by empty plates. Speaks for itself really, although from my point of view there was a lot that could be improved:

reclaiming the oil - keep more water in the base for longer?
the consitency of the base - reduce the base once most of the oil is out?
,,     ,,     of the curry - would it be better to reduce the final curry instead?
the sides - think next time i'm going to make my own naans, poppadoms and pilau!

[SnS]

Nice post Button

The reason the water is evaporated out of the base is to produce less volume and subsequently more a concentrated gravy(less space in the freezer). The base being quite thick needs water added at the cooking stage which is then cooked off to give the correct consistancy ... if I understood your question correctly?

Regards
SnS

ps some party!

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ah that would be it. I didn't really give any of the curries time to reduce. I have about 3x 2 serving batches of your gravy in the freezer now, think I might do another jalfrezi or madras later on this week - or do you recommend any other curries?

I love curries with a depth & range of flavour rather than intensity - the way a jalfrezi starts off lemony then goes into a tomato then the spices kick in...ah so so good!

[Unclebuck]

button Fantastic post and thanks for the feedback and pic's looks like you had a good night 

[Curry King]

Top post and the photos look great, what did everyone have to say on your efforts?

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they said the flavours were great, spicy but not overpowering and that they didn't think it was anywhere near as greasy as a takeaway. i got a couple of marriage proposals from the girls. my mate who doesn't like prawns loved the prawn madras. no negatives from anyone - think there was just enough salt so there was no blandness anywhere.

[joshallen2k]

Great post! Brave first try with the pics and all for that many people.

Fantastic.