Topic: Personal curry making breakthrough

[Bobby Bhuna]

Hey guys,

Thanks to Jerry's gas hob related wisdom, I had a really good base attempt and final curry today. Delicious, and one of the closest yet. Other than managing not to burn my base on this foreign technology, the success was down to very minimal spicing.

In my base I just did very standard things, really cut down actually. I went for 6 medium white onions, 1 small carrot, 1/4 green pepper (all I had, but I think it was perfect), some oil, 1 tin tomatoes, salt and BE spice mix. Chucked it all in bar the tomatoes and spice mix, simmered for a half hour, put the toms and spice in and blended, then simmered very gently for 40 mins.

In my final curry I used all the usual jazz and only 1 sparse tsp BE spice mix. It really is the closest I've made to my locals. I think CK was really onto it when he talks about minimal spicing. I think over spicing has really been my downfall. A little spice goes a long way!

I'm ashamed to admit I don't own measuring spoons. Also when a recipe calls for level dsrt spoons or similar, I always round them a little since actually level has so little spice. If only I'd followed the recipes more closely.

[JerryM]

BB,

some interesting things here for me.

i too have cottoned onto the minimal spicing ala CK.

how much spice did u put into the base?

on the spoons i think it might just be what we all need to do ie start measuring by sight as the per what the BIR's do. not sure i'm brave enough yet.

[Stephen Lindsay]

well done Bobby, glad to hear you were satisfied with the result - what dishes did you cook?

[976bar]

I recently went on an Indian cookery course for a day and I have to say that minimal spicing is the essence of good Indian food.

There were four of us on the course and we all had to make a Chicken Chilli Marinade. Everyone used the same ingredients and it was literally a 1/2 tsp of this or a 1/4 tsp of that, in some cases only an 1/8 tsp was used for certain spices. The end results were fantastic, and although we all made our own using the same ingredients, they all tasted slightly different, because someone added just a little more garlic, or ginger or fennel etc.....

A lot of the time less is more

[Bobby Bhuna]

Hey Jerry, I used 4 fairly sparse dsrt spoons in the base.

The final curry I made was a chicken Bhuna/Madras type thing. Delicious.

[Secret Santa]

the success was down to very minimal spicing.

Well that's sort of timely for me. I made another batch of Bruce edwards' new base sauce a week or so ago. Now the first time I made this was just after he posted the recipe and technique and after I made it I posted that it was quite possibly the worse base I had ever made.

Anyway it turns out I couldn't have been more wrong. The base itself still doesn't taste all that good on its own to me but I made up the madras from his recipe and it was pretty damn good. Now Bruce reckons that this base/curry combination is a robust one like they used to have in the old days. I don't agree with that, it still doesn't make a curry which takes me back to the eighties, for example, in taste or aroma. However, there is definitely an underlying something which hints at the madrases I am trying to emulate.

So to the point, this curry very definitely falls under the minimal spicing variety, using only 1tsp of spice mix in the madras, and yet it is definitely a very good one. I don't know what went wrong when I made it the first time but I'm glad I tried it again. It seems minimal spicing definitely has its place.

[Bobby Bhuna]

I seem to recall Bruce actually says to take a knife over the dsrt spoons of level spice mix to ensure they are genuinely level. For me, this is the key. I didn't actually take a knife over the spoon, but judged it. He's not wrong I'll tell you that!

[JerryM]

BB,

thanks for spoon info. i recon u're spice was around 2.5% if the base volume was around 2.5L and would be low c/w most i've used. i intend to try that amount on my next base.

[chilli head]

I too tend to use no measures when adding spices to the sauce as Ive wrote before if you get the same meal everytime it would get boring so i tend to use a large wooden spoon and just gauge as close as possible and i use my base sauce that i have used for 6-7 years now its just a simple one as you can start to get to complex with it and end up making the meal instead of the sauce remember you can add spices but you can never take them away.
           Andy