Topic: ++++MDB’s Birmingham Balti Gravy 100% Clone Al Frash Balti Restaurant ++++

[livo]

Do you not feel that to be a little one-sided, George ?  You are happy to try others' recipes which are freely published here yet decline to publish your own ?  Not the sort of attitude I would have expected from one of our most senior members ...  Oh, and I should add that I purchase a 300gm pack of cassia bark (wrongly labelled "Cinnamon") specifically to try my hand at making this much-lauded balti ...
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** Phil.

So your Cassia Bark is also incorrectly labelled Phil?  That's not really surprising if it's coming out of India.  Shake a leg mate and bash this out so you can make an informed appraisal.

[livo]

Things that could "go wrong"!!

I made 50% quantity and if anything I rounded spicing up.  This would not account for deficiency in spice flavour.

Ingredients:
Vegetable oil – not olive oil  I used 2 TBSP (1/2 Chef spoon) of vegetable oil
1 kg onion, roughly chopped I used a weighed 500 grams
1 tsp salt  1/2 tsp used
small pinch Ajwain seeds a few grains of Ajwain used
1/2 green and 1/2 red pepper, chopped 1/4 of each used
125g fresh carrot, roughly chopped approx 60 g used
Whole Spices:
Weigh 55g pieces of cassia bark (I know it sounds a lot but trust me…) 27.5 grams used. Broken up pieces from bottom of container
5 cloves 3 cloves used
10 green cardamom pods pierced 5 used
3 star anise 1.5 used
5 tej patta (Indian bay leaves) dried DON’T use normal bay leaves – omit instead size is a non critical issue here. I used 3 medium (80 cm)

Spice Mix:
2 tsp chilli powder (optional) being optional means non critical but I used 1 tsp of hot Indian Paprika (ie: KRCP)
2.5 tsp coriander powder 1.5 tsp
1.5 tsp cumin powder 1 level tsp
3 tsp turmeric powder 1.5 tsp
2.5 tsp curry powder This could have affect.  I used 1.5 tsp of Mother's Recipe Mild Curry Powder
a good pinch kasuri methi (dried Fenugreek Leaves)  I used enough
2 tsp garam masala powder This could have affect. I used a generic proprietary brand 1 tsp
Large handful fresh coriander 1/2 cup of chopped used
30g peeled fresh garlic 3 large cloves. Easily 15 grams
30g peeled fresh ginger 15 grams fresh used
250g of chopped tomatoes I used 1/2 can of premium chopped tomatoes w/ additional paste concentrate

I understand some people will insist that my mistake was making 1/2 quantity.  This is not the case with Base Gravy which I have found to be easily and successfully scaled to any quantity desired and if only performing a 1 step halving or doubling is perfectly acceptable.

Having made this base as specified and then following up with the Chicken Balti (pretty simple dish to cook), where did it go wrong?

[Kashmiri Bob]

Things that could "go wrong"!!
Having made this base as specified and then following up with the Chicken Balti (pretty simple dish to cook), where did it go wrong?

My money would be on it going wrong when making the akhni stock.

Rob       

[Secret Santa]

Also I have given the recipe to five complete novices to try. They have never made a curry from scratch before but I supplied them with all the spices. Four of them absolutely love it, the fifth person is still yet to try it.

So you think five novices who have not even made any sort of curry before are all qualified to make this base sauce without error but me and livo who have huge experience of making all sorts of curry over many years aren't and must have messed up somehow? Hmmmm, I think your logic is a bit skewed.

And these five lab rats, what sort of curries do they usually eat? Is it standard BIR or balti or both? And what is there usual curry, the bland korma side of things or the fuller flavoured savoury madras type curries? This all has bearing on the validity of your test.

[Secret Santa]

Things that could "go wrong"!!
Having made this base as specified and then following up with the Chicken Balti (pretty simple dish to cook), where did it go wrong?

My money would be on it going wrong when making the akhni stock.   

Really? You think cooking whole spices in a pan of water is the hardest part to follow? And yeah, yeah, I did accidentally leave the lid off so had more water loss than I should have but you think that is the reason I find the base bland? The mind boggles! I'm finding it hard to judge whether your responses are just designed as a wind up or as genuine, thoughtful input.

Anyway, we'll find out when I eventually get around to making it again, to the letter (spoiler, it ain't gonna make an ounce of difference).

[Secret Santa]

... I purchase a 300gm pack of cassia bark (wrongly labelled "Cinnamon") specifically to try my hand at making this much-lauded balti ...
--
** Phil.

So your Cassia Bark is also incorrectly labelled Phil?  That's not really surprising if it's coming out of India.  Shake a leg mate and bash this out so you can make an informed appraisal.

It seems it is correctly labelled. From Wikipedia, " Cassia is also the English common name of some species in the genus Cinnamomum of the family Lauraceae."  And cinnamomum is just cinnamon, so they are quite correct in labelling the cassia as cinnamon.

[Secret Santa]

I understand some people will insist that my mistake was making 1.2 quantity.  This is not the case with Base Gravy which I have found to be easily and successfully scaled to any quantity desired and if only performing a 1 step halving or doubling is perfectly acceptable.

Having made this base as specified and then following up with the Chicken Balti (pretty simple dish to cook), where did it go wrong?

I don't have any issue with the linear scaling of base quantities. The only possible error would be you didn't do the scaling accurately for whatever reason. So maybe you wanted to scale by half but forgot this for one or more of the ingredients and used the full quantity instead. But that would add flavour to the base and also it seems unlikely you'd make this error for more than one ingredient. I have made this sort of mistake myself though in the past, usually as a result of transcribing original quantities wrongly or just having a brain fart while doing the scaling. I'm sure that didn't happen for me on this one though.

[Bob-A-Job]

Things that could "go wrong"!!
Having made this base as specified and then following up with the Chicken Balti (pretty simple dish to cook), where did it go wrong?

My money would be on it going wrong when making the akhni stock.   

Really? ...yeah, yeah, I did accidentally leave the lid off so had more water loss than I should have but you think that is the reason I find the base bland?

Whilst you would end up with less liquid stock, wouldn't you by the same token end up with a more concentrated stock*?  We have all done that with base before (reduced) so that we can rehydrate during cooking.

*assumption that the cooking time was the same and the liquid loss did not force an early stop to the stock production, which might reduce the concentration of flavours.

[Peripatetic Phil]

It seems it is correctly labelled. From Wikipedia, " Cassia is also the English common name of some species in the genus Cinnamomum of the family Lauraceae."  And cinnamomum is just cinnamon, so they are quite correct in labelling the cassia as cinnamon.

You may well be the world's expert on what one should expect from a true Brummie balti, Santa, but your grasp of both first-order predicate logic and taxonomy seem sadly lacking ...  Let me take your argument to bits piece by piece —

"Cassia is also the English common name of some species in the genus Cinnamomum of the family Lauraceae"  — so "Some X are Y", where "X" is "some species in the genus Cinnamomum of the family Lauraceae", and Y is "commonly called Cassia".  Fine so far.  But then we have "Cinnamomum is just cinnamon" ("all X are Y," where "X" is "species of Cinnamomum" and "Y" is "cinnamon").  And here it falls down.  Just as all primates are mammals but not all mammals are primates, so all cinnamon is harvested from Cinnamomum but not all species of Cinnamomum yield (true) cinnamon.  Cinnamon is, in fact, "the inner bark of an East Indian tree (Cinnamomum zeylanicum), dried in the sun, in rolls or ‘quills’, and used as a spice. It is of a characteristic yellowish brown colour, brittle, fragrant, and aromatic, and acts as a carminative and restorative".  Cassia, on the other hand, is "an inferior kind of cinnamon, esp. the bark obtained from Cinnamomum cassia; thicker, coarser, less delicate in flavour, and cheaper than the true cinnamon. More fully cassia-bark".

Stick to your baltis, Santa !

[livo]

My money would be on it going wrong when making the akhni stock.

Rob       

Boiling some whole spices in a pan of water (and I used a lid)?    This can't be taken seriously and is about as likely a source of error as using 50 g or 60 g of Cassia Bark instead of the optimal 55 g would be.  Also, I can assure that I didn't make any mistakes in my reductions for half quantities, other than intentionally.  Not that it would matter anyway since any initial error would end up being spread out over 8 to 10 Baltis (or curries) or in my case 4 or 5 for half quantity.

So Phil, I'm assuming you have bought a pack of Cassia Bark (Ingredients: cinnamomum spp) that is labelled Cinnamon, as did I. I presume you intend to try this Balti gravy and dish.

It's a shame we still have only 4 members who have cooked it.  We need to go to the tie breaker round.