Topic: cardamom or cassia bark???

[jb]

In my usual curry house last night I had a wonderful North Indian garlic chili chicken.The waiters are really friendly so since my recent lessons I tend to bombard them with questions when I'm in there.The dish was lovely;sweet,hot but with a really smoky flavour.At the bottom was a strange ingredient,I asked them what it was and they said cardamom bark.I've never heard of this could they have meant cassia bark???  I have to say it gave the dish a very unique flavour.

[gary]

What did it look like?

[jimmy2x]

maybe black cardamon is what they meant, it does look very much like bark

[emin-j]

In my usual curry house last night I had a wonderful North Indian garlic chili chicken.The waiters are really friendly so since my recent lessons I tend to bombard them with questions when I'm in there.The dish was lovely;sweet,hot but with a really smoky flavour.At the bottom was a strange ingredient,I asked them what it was and they said cardamom bark.I've never heard of this could they have meant cassia bark???  I have to say it gave the dish a very unique flavour.

jb , Cardamom's come in a Green variety which give a sort of perfumey flavour or the black Cardamom which gives a smokey flavour , lastly cassia bark has a sweet flavour.

[jb]

Pretty sure now it wasn't casia bark it must have been black cardamom...I have to say it was a wonderful flavour

[Masala Mark]

Hey jb,

I too have had black cardamoms in some of the curry's I have bought from local IRs.

Have found one once in a Butter Chicken and also a Rogan Josh.

They aren't always in each curry though, so I am surmising from the lesson that I had, and it is a bit of a jump, that like what we did with the 3 different gravies, whole garam masala pieces are in the bases of curries here in some IRs here in Australia.

When they take the sauce from the different pots to make the end dishes sometimes a pod or piece of cassia bark will find its way through to the end dish. They can't be putting it in each individual curry as you would then find it in that curry each time you bought it.

Looking forward to some more of your lesson posts too, nudge nudge, wink wink.

Cheers,
Mark

[jb]

No probs I will post some more-I have a 5 month old baby so he takes up most of my time at the moment!!