Topic: Curry Sauce - this is the closest one i have used to date (Dec 04)

[George]

I'm a newbie here and perhaps this is a dumb question BUT what is it the 'closest one' to? i.e. given that the basic curry sauce is only work-in-progress within a UK indian restaurant/take-away. You can't order a portion of basic curry sauce, can you? And be sure they haven't added anything. Pure samples would be useful in order to have a reference point to aim at. Better still, get half a dozen samples from as many take-aways, in order to assess consistency, and have even more to go on.

Moving on to the next stage of cooking, whether it be Chicken Korma (one of my favorites) or any final dish, surely adds a whole load more uncertainty as to whether 'stage 1' - the basic sauce is as good as my suggested sample of six professionally made sauces.

Regards
George

[Gareth]

600ml sounds like a huge amount of oil to use - has anyone tried the recipe with less oil?

Also, I wonder what a good weight of onions would be - 2lb?

Gareth.

[pete]

I'm a newbie here and perhaps this is a dumb question BUT what is it the 'closest one' to? i.e. given that the basic curry sauce is only work-in-progress within a UK indian restaurant/take-away.
Regards
George

All the restaurant recipes fry a little onion then add a little garlic/ ginger puree and spices, then a large dollop of a basic curry gravy, main precooked ingredients then dried fenugreek and fresh coriander.
To get this restaurant flavour, it is important to have the right flavour curry sauce.
Using the above gives a very good finished result.
I have used this with excellent results more times than I can remember.
However, there are other basic sauces on this site.
Check out Muttleys "non rambling" sauce or the jpeg downloads from "curry house cookery" in downloads.

600ml sounds like a huge amount of oil to use - has anyone tried the recipe with less oil?

Also, I wonder what a good weight of onions would be - 2lb?

Gareth.

Try the recipe with the full amount of oil. You can always spoon off the excess.
If you don't like the recipe then modify it.
And 2lbs of onions would be fine.

[Blondie]

Hi All,

I've just made a batch of Stewpots base sauce. It appears to be the real deal and will report back after I have left it for a couple of days and made a couple of final dishes from it.

Just one thing that I found a pain and took me more time than I would have liked was fishing out the whole ingredients before blending.

I wondered what thoughts any of you may have as to using a  BOUQUET GARNI of the whole spices or maybe using Cinamon powder and Ground Black Pepper (amount would need experimentation ) in place of the whole ingredients.

Cheers All,

Blondie

[Curry King]

Just one thing that I found a pain and took me more time than I would have liked was fishing out the whole ingredients before blending.

Ive been there, spent enough of my time fishing out pods and stick.

You could add half a teaspoon of garam masala instead.

[Yousef]

Ive made two batches now and yep Ive been fishing as well , it a real pain but worth the effort.
I think this sauce with the proper Garlic/Ginger frying plus the addition of puree tomato (minus the juice) at an early stage of cooking must be as good as it gets.

Does anyone else throw in some chopped Coriander Stalks, this certainly adds something as well!!
Alas i only have an Electric hob and think this is making a big difference to my results, i just cant get the flames ;D ;D ;D

S

[ghanna]

hi, ADMIN
please don't fish the spices out from the finished gravy .
Garam masala that we do add at the end is these spices but ground.
they perfume the gravy and they mellow in taste and texture a lot after that long boiling with the onions and other ingredients.
when i puree them with the onions and the  other ingredients i can not see them any more or feel their texture,but believe me they add some thing to the taste.
yes they add coriander leaves and stalks to the gravy with a little bit of fresh mint ,little bit of fresh dill,and little bit of fresh scared basil ( you can find this in THIA cooking a  lot ). please see my post about talking to a restaurant owner.
thank you very much for this site ,it is actually one of the best .you made a lot of people happy.
GOD bless you
thanks
ghanna

[Yousef]

Thanks Ghanna ;D

[Mark J]

Tried this again last weekend, this is still the best base IMHO, it is heavily spiced but the smell from it is incredible.

Following my feeling that onions are the key to the missing taste in our replicas I fried the onions initially for about an hour before adding any other ingredients to caramelise them, to my mind it made a noticeable difference to the base, probably the best yet.

On another note I visited my friendly local takeaway last night and on asking him about cooking a curry dulling your taste buds he agreed and said you are always best off leaving a curry for a few hours after cooking it

[DARTHPHALL]

Is that correct Mark you fried the Onions for an hour ??