Topic: I may never make base gravy again

[Robbo141]

Trader Joe’s is a supermarket where all their food is own branded. I used to buy fresh naan from Stonefire but they were very lack luster and nothing like proper naan.  Finding these frozen versions was a godsend.  Saves the faff of making them myself although it is easy.
Hope your balti turns out good and you can post the recipe.

Robbo

[livo]

I need to upgrade the rating for the Instant Pot butter chicken. Before packing the leftovers from the cooked dish I packed a takeaway container for my daughter's partner. He was not there due to shift work and butter chicken is his go to dish.

He has rated it, the best butter chicken I've ever made, and lamented that I probably didn't remember how I did it. I don't know why he would think that!   Anyway, the dish gets the  from him and I do know how to recreate it this time.

I did the "kushi" balti Instant Pot version. Very nice, some tweaking to do still and I'll post what I did soon. A little more to it, as expected, but still much easier than the whole base gravy method.

[livo]

Not exactly Kushi Balti Chicken in the Instant Pot / Multi Cooker.  (I will do it properly to assess how close it is.)

I've attached a photo of the ingredients after minimal preparation.  From the lower left and in roughly clockwise direction.

Cassia Bark, Tej Pat, 2 cardamom, 2 cloves.
Kasoori Methi
Mixed Paste (2 TBSP each of Balti Paste and Mild Madras Curry Paste)
300 ml of water
Dried Coriander leaf (I didn't have fresh)
Blended in the Nutri-Bullet - 2 medium onions and about 30 grams of carrot with 1 TBSP of oil and a splash of water.
1 small can of Tomato Supreme. (Approximately 1 cup and any form of tomato will do)
Vegetable oil  (I probably used 3 - 4 TBSP in total)
1.5 kg of large cut Chicken thigh fillet
1 TBSP Ginger 1 TBSP Garlic
1 tsp salt
1/4 each chopped red and green capsicum.

What I did:

I started by tempering the whole spices in oil in the instant pot on Saute mode.  After a minute or so, I added the pureed onion and carrot and allowed it to simmer away for about 10 minutes, stirring to avoid catching.
While this was going, I used a small frypan on the cooktop to fry the garlic and ginger on low heat. To this I added the curry pastes and allowed to fry for about 2 minutes, then added the tomato and continued to cook on low flame.
I then removed the whole spices from the instant pot and poured in the frypan mixture, water and added the chicken, capsicum and salt.
Stir it up to combine and set on Curry mode for 15 minutes.
After completion I allowed to pressure down for 10 minutes before lifting the valve and opening the lid.
Add Kasoori Methi and Coriander and cook for a further 5 minutes on Saute.

Observations:
Again, don't add water or use a lot less, just to avoid initial sticking. (It is a non stick instant pot but )  I again needed to thicken with corn flour / water slurry as it was very watery consistency upon opening the lid.  I think this is the biggest downfall of the method over pan fry BIR.

I forgot to include Garam Masala (from Kushi Balti).  I added extra 1 tsp of salt after tasting following the pressure cook.

It made a nice mild chicken curry (Balti???) dish from scratch in less than an hour.  It requires some tweaking but the method is solid.  I used homemade pastes but you could use store bought of your choice for different profile dishes.  Kashmiri, Rogan Josh etc.  Some quartered fresh tomato added in the final 5 minutes would be OK as well.

[Robbo141]

Nice variation Livo. I never cook that much chicken so would reduce the amount of pastes by half when I give it a go.  Using pastes isn’t something I’ve tried yet with this new found pressure cooking technique.

Robbo

[livo]

There was enough in the pot for 10 servings.

[livo]

Cooking curry can be a very confusing and frustrating pursuit.  Following my initial success with the Instant Pot Butter Chicken, and confident that my comments herein, would remind me of exactly what I'd done, I revisited yesterday.  Well actually I cooked it on Friday and allowed it to sit for a day as this improved the dish last time, as is commonly experienced.  While still an enjoyable meal, it just did not turn out the same.  I did make a few minor changes but to be honest, I can't see how they would have had any detrimental effect.  I simply withheld some water and added the chicken slightly later to avoid over-cooking.  The dish simply lacked any depth of flavour and I can't determine why.  Oh well, there's always another day to try again.

The plus side was that I did prepare a batch of Dawn Simpson's Spiced Chokos, using up a few of the many currently hanging on our vine, and my naan turned out well enough for the family to compliment them as "really good this time".  3 varieties, cheese, garlic and coriander plus plain.  These were cooked on a cast iron flat plate I found somewhere (can't remember where) over gas and simply flipped.  None of the tawa inversion etc.  They turned out great.  Yeasted naan with buttermilk and egg.

[Robbo141]

Chokos… well there’s a thing I had to google. Interesting.
And I agree about the frustration that comes with inconsistency.  The times I’ve cooked what I thought were absolutely identical dishes and have one great, only to find the repeat was meh…For that IP butter chicken, my only mods to Urvashi Pitre’s recipe are;
1. Use extra hot chilli powder instead of cayenne
2. Added ingredients - black cardamom, few green cardamom, star anise, couple cloves, Indian bay leaf, 5 or 6 Thai chillies, sliced lengthwise.
At least we get fed doing this never ending quest.

Robbo

[livo]

A very versatile vegetable that grows prolifically (here anyway) on a climbing vine. People put buckets and boxes full out on the street for neighbours to take. We have given 10s of kilograms of them away this season. Bake with your roast veggies, boil or steam them or make fried veggie patties (similar to pakora).  You can even slice them up and stretch your apples into 2 pies instead of 1. They will take on the apple flavour and you wont know the differece.  I have fond memory of them being pressure cooked on my grandmother's gas cooker. Apparently they fed many in the depression before my time.

The great thing is that they make a really nice curry quite similar to okra / bhindi, or you simply add them into your mixed veggie curry.  I love the spiced choko recipe I use.  I found it by shear chance about 20 years ago and make it several times every year when the vines are harvesting.

As for the inconsistency, I'm stumped as to how my second attempt simply didn't work. It was still OK but the first one was much better.