Topic: missing flavours and e-books.

[bryan@232]

    I recently found this site and I'm impressed - people who know what they're talking about and who share my enthusiasm for curries, in particular, the restaurant curry. I became obsessed with this in the late 70's. It took me a long time, but I was eventually able to cook it for myself. Interesting to see that other people have the same problems that I had - missing flavours.I believe that everything you need to know is on this site, the problem is cooking smells desensitising your sense of taste. Some years ago I devised an experiment to settle this once and for all.I prepared the ingredients to cook a (restaurant) curry, then went and bought a take-away from my usual restaurant. I started to eat the take-away, then cooked my curry.I returned to eat the take-away and guess what? Flavour completely altered,it tasted like the one I had cooked, and did for the rest of that day.Next morning both curries tasted the same, like 'next day' curry. OK, so not conclusive,I may have just got the result I was expecting, but pretty convincing.
                 Now about this e-book, SECRETS OF THE INDIAN RESTAURANT CURRY, yes, a rip off of Curry House Cookery, but hasn't anyone noticed how familiar the style is? I believe the author is not resident in the USA, but much closer to home. Haslemere to be precise.                               

[Curry King]

Hi Bryan,

I agree with you on this and I would be interested to know what gravy you use?  Also your favorite restaurant curry recipe?

Cheers
cK

[DARTHPHALL]

Bloody spot on first post mate, you are now a part of the Tribe ;D ;D ;D

[CurryCrazy]

Hi

If you have managed to re-create a descent curry at home then well done. I'll try the whole taste test some time.

I agree to some extent that senses can alter during cooking but from the curries I've cooked it seems as though "the taste" is being masked by over spicing/adding unnecessary spices.

My curries taste "heavy" (if that makes sense!) and not at all like the "fresher" flavours in my local BIR curry.

In my humble (and possibly misguided) opinion, it's not a taste we are looking for anyway...it's a smell ! ?Apparently most of what we generally call tastes are actually smells (thats why we smell the wine before drinking it). So all I need to do now is walk around my local asian grocers holding a curry, smelling the the spices ?;D

But what do I know....I've gone mad..

[DARTHPHALL]

The "smell" thats what I'm predominantly looking for 

[bryan@232]

The smell that you're looking for, are you sure you haven't achieved it? Try this: Get someone to fry a little restaurant masala{coriander/turmeric/cumin/curry powder mixture.} while you wait outside the kitchen for the smell to reach you. What you should get is the restaurant 'kitchen door' smell. If you stand over the pan and get a faceful of the fumes, you can forget it!

[bryan@232]

I can think of several things that could make a curry heavy. The basic ingredients of curry gravy, a puree of cooked onion,garlic and ginger with salt and oil should give quite a light flavour. Add some chilli and cooked meat and you have a basic dish.Add minimal spicing for subtle flavours and smells{which will be wasted on you if you now eat the curry} However, an excess of carrot, old stale chilli powder,excess or inappropriate spicing can make the dish heavy. When you make curry gravy, taste it. If you dont want to carry on eating it then its probably not right.
       CurryKing asked what curry gravy I use. I have several; I will post a recipe that hopefully illustrates what I have been saying.

[CurryCrazy]

Cheers for the feedback Bryan.

Time to get cooking (although it is 30 degrees outside so I might wait a bit!!)