History of the forum

[Secret Santa]

I actually have printed out their version known as "The Body Base".

This is what I have:

Melting Base Gravy Revision 3

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Revision 3 Melting Base Gravy

This revision of the melting base gravy has been developed to avoid the over cooking of the spiced water and to sweeten the gravy. It is simple to make and you will replicate the taste if the correct ingredients are used and the methods followed accurately.

You will need the following:

Recipe makes approx 2 litres of gravy.

The Body Base

600g of Spanish/Dutch Onions when peeled
80g of carrots
1/4 of a green bell pepper
1/4 of a red bell pepper
1 tablespoon of blended garlic
2 teaspoons of blended ginger
300ml of Canola Oil
1 1/2 Level teaspoons of Table Salt
1.5 litres Of Hot Water
100g of tinned plum tomatoes
4 green cardamoms
1 1/2 tablespoons of Mix Powder
1 1/2 teaspoons of garam masala
1 1/2 teaspoons of onion powder
1 1/2 tablespoons of Tomato Paste
50g of block coconut cream


Method

1. Peel the onions and chop relatively fine, approx 1/2 to 3/4 inch pieces

2. Chop the 1/4 green and red pepper into 1/2 inch pieces.

3. Slice the carrots thinly

4. Add the oil to a pan on a low to medium heat, and allow the oil to start to warm up.
5. Add half of the chopped onions. Sprinkle half of the salt over the top of these.
6. Add the remaining onions, sprinkling the remaining salt over the top again. It is during this stage that the salt will begin to react with the onions.
7. Allow the oil to slowly gain temperature.
8. At the point when the oil is just starting to gently fry the onions, give the onions a stir.
9. Add the garlic, followed by the ginger, and stir in. At this point, approximately 4 minutes should have elapsed since adding the oil to the pan.
10. Add the chopped red and green pepper, green cardamoms and carrot. Stir in and allow to cook.
11. After 20 minutes from adding the oil to the pan, add the water.
12. Place the lid on the pan and turn up the heat to boil the contents. Once boiling, turn down to a simmer and add the plum tomato.
13. Stir in and replace the lid. Cook for 30 minutes.
14. Add the mix powder, onion powder and garam masala. Do not stir in.
15. Cook for 10 minutes.
16. Add the tomato paste and block coconut. Stir in and allow to simmer for 20 minutes.
17. Turn off the heat and blend the gravy.

Note 1: the gravy should be the consistency of thin soup.





MB 3 Mix Powder

8 teaspoons of turmeric powder
6 teaspoons of Supreme curry powder (must just say curry powder, not Madras powder of anything else).
5 teaspoons of coriander powder
4 teaspoons of cumin powder
2 teaspoons of garlic powder
2 teaspoons of Supreme garam masala
1 teaspoon of ginger powder

Mix all together and store in an airtight contained.


MB 3 Special Mix Powder
This special mix powder is an enhanced version of the normal mix powder and gives a much deeper richer flavour to curry dishes and is a must try. Where recipes call for mix powder (melting base recipes) you can replace it with this one.

Note 1: Please ensure all spices and ingredients are fresh.

You will need to mix the following:

All measurements are level teaspoons.

16 teaspoons of turmeric powder
11 teaspoons of coriander powder
11 teaspoons of Supreme mild curry powder
7 teaspoons of cumin powder
5 teaspoons of paprika powder
4 teaspoons of Supreme onion gravy powder
3 teaspoons of garlic powder
2 teaspoons of Supreme garam masala
2 teaspoon of ginger powder
1 teaspoon of Supreme red bassar powder
1 teaspoon of Supreme mixed spice.

Mix all together and store in an airtight contained.

[Secret Santa]

Was Yellow fingers, Haldi and Pete the same person?

No, Yellow Fingers was me. I don't think I was using a VPN in those days. I'm pretty sure Stew knew who I was as I made no effort to change my style, but didn't re-ban me. Haldi and pete are the same.

[Secret Santa]

/Edit: and to give those born in the last 20-30yrs, they have nothing to compare the current offerings against, so they cannot be held to blame for accepting inferior product to that we used to like, then loved and now crave.

Exactly. It took me years to catch on to the fact that people were eating inferior curries and like you say had no reference point to better curries. So no wonder they were amazed at what they were producing from this forum while for me they were just ok. If my only visit to a BIR restaurant in many years recently is anything to go by the state of the industry is absolutely dire. And this restaurant was one I rated highly about fifteen years earlier and is still under the same management. On the review websites it gets a lot of very good feedback but I did notice  a good few whose experience closely matched my own so I assume they are used to the older style curries like me. That any people actually rate this places food highly though is a tragedy.

[Robbo141]

....born in the last 20-30 years....I wish.

SS, thanks for that base recipe. One to keep for future. I will pressure cook it.

Livo, let's see some scans if you can.  Blast from the past always welcome.

Robbo

[Secret Santa]

SS, thanks for that base recipe.

I had a quick look for Supreme curry powder that "must just say curry powder, not Madras powder of anything else" and I couldn't find one that didn't say madras. No doubt I'm now repeating a discussion from the time the base was posted though.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Santa — "This revision of the melting base gravy has been developed to avoid the over cooking of the spiced water".  But what spiced water ?  The recipe which you have kindly contributed (and for which I am extremely grateful) makes no mention of "spiced water" other than in the intro.  So what am I (or are we) missing ?
--
** Phil.

[livo]

At first glance, the melting base recipe posted by Santa is the same as the body base recipe I have, or at least very similar. I'll double check and provide the scans anyway. Interesting to see the inclusion of Supreme red bassar in the MB3 Special mix powder.

It think Supreme must have been the RCR Shop brand and they were clearly running the whole shebang to make money.  I can buy "curry powder" here in generic form but there can be no assumption that it is even close to the Supreme brand.  I wonder what the Supreme mixed spice was.

Phil, I can't see any mention of spiced water.  I recall the whole RCR experience as confused, but I was totally unfamiliar with anything to do with BIR method at the time. Perhaps it would make more sense to me today, if it still existed.

[Secret Santa]

... makes no mention of "spiced water" other than in the intro.  So what am I (or are we) missing ?

The first iterations of the melting base (you'll notice this is version 3) had a separate spice water recipe which I believe has been replaced in this recipe by the garam masala and other stuff so it no longer exists as such. I don't have an immediately up-loadable version of the first spice water recipe but I'll transcribe it and upload it tomorrow.

[livo]

Ah. Now that statement makes sense. The spiced water of previous version was removed.

[livo]

Here is the scanned pdf file of the RCR Body Base.  In all respects it is identical to the MB3 version posted by Santa with the exception that it states Rapeseed Oil instead of Canola.  It has the same 17 step instruction and uses plain hot water (ie; not spiced). On the second page you can read the reasoning for using the marketed brand spices and assessment of using substitute East End or heaven forbid, Rajah.

There is no mention of the Special Mixed Powder here.

I tried using the Wayback Machine to access RCR (https://web.archive.org/web/20211221031337/http://realcurryrecipes.co.uk/) but as it was a pay to access site the actual recipe section appears to not function as archived accessible.  Once you try to go into the recipes section the url changes to "secret curry recipes" marked as "private" and nothing works.