Topic: What Makes a decent BIR madras "the classics"

[Peripatetic Phil]

Now I distinctly remember doing a quick Google search at the time and finding a few suppliers of real tomato powder but having repeated the exercise just now I can't find even one amongst the usual online suppliers. Unless you want a few hundred kilos of the stuff that is! 

Ee, tha's not bin tryin' lad : look'ee ere.  Furst 'it, that wurr ...

[stevepaul]

JM,

Back when I asked in the Asian store what the red powder was the only name they used was tomato powder, and it is obviously a different animal than paprika. It is actually made from spray dried tomatoes. You can buy it on-line but it is dammed expensive. Whether it would make any difference to an actual curry is speculative in my opinion.

Something else they always had  in the store were unlabeled plastic bags filled with three spices. Each spice had been scooped in, one on top of the other, in what looked like equal amounts. One was red, one yellow and the third was brownish. When I inquired as to what the mix was, they simply said, curry. Unfortunately I didn't ask what the spices were so that's not going to be much help to you.

I do believe the heat from a 70's madras came from using green chilies as opposed to red chili powder. To my mind they give what I describe as a dry heat and I can only reproduce that old time taste sensation by using them. No chili powder I have tried offers the same experience. That said I never did see any green chili in the sauce so maybe it was made into a paste?

Jerry. Can you confirm that the sauce of the seventies was so thin you literally couldn't scoop it up using a piece of chapatti. That's how I remember it, but at the time I'd probably had a gallon of cider beforehand and a paracetamol breakfast the morning after....oh happy days.

Steve.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Something else they always had  in the store were unlabeled plastic bags filled with three spices. Each spice had been scooped in, one on top of the other, in what looked like equal amounts. One was red, one yellow and the third was brownish. When I inquired as to what the mix was, they simply said, curry. Unfortunately I didn't ask what the spices were so that's not going to be much help to you.

I would hazard a guess of chillies, turmeric and cumin.

Jerry. Can you confirm that the sauce of the seventies was so thin you literally couldn't scoop it up using a piece of chapatti.

I think that by the time you got to the "curry" end of the spectrum, the sauce was fairly insubstantial, but the opposite end (Bangalore phal) was anything but, and was at times likened to eating chilly puree :-)  So I would hazard a guess that both vindaloo and Madras had body, but not necessarily the body which we associate with them today.

** Phil.

[stevepaul]

Hi Phil,

I would agree with your guess of chilies, turmeric and cumin. They seem the obvious choice.

When it comes to the consistency of the sauce from back then, well, from a standard curry up to a phal the sauce remained the same....thin. Only the heat varied. The was no difference between the madras I ordered, or the phal my friend had (the one and only time he did). This seemed to be the norm throughout the eat in/take away curry houses in and around the town where I lived (Accrington)

But each establishment had it's own unique taste and everybody had their favourite one. Mine was a small TA, that, if you hadn't have known better you would have sworn it was an empty condemned shop. But boy, could that guy turn out a great madras, and it was the cheapest in town.

Steve.

[JerryM]

Secret Santa,

i very much agree - i'm not looking for tomato powder. i am convinced in BIR terminology it's paprika.

stevepaul,

you could be right on the use of green chilli. i don't know enough about it yet having not used it as much as i'd like. i know it was used in phal and am convinced it was used in vindaloo too. a restaurant gave us a plate of the green chillies on one occasion when we asked what made the curry so hot. the chilli part of it is fine tuning for me - i need to get the basic taste working 1st.

my experience is that the curry was not thin - a friend actually had chapatii in place of rice quite often - we had not discovered naan at that point. the madras was very deep red - i think down to either paprika, more tom puree, caramelised onion or cinnamon bark. other than the colour the only other distinct feature was an understone of green cardamom. it really was an onion gravy converted into curry. very smooth and moorish.

i have 1 off portion of base left and intend to up the paprika and puree to see if they have the desired effect.

i think i need a more potent base also to help out. the reclaimed oil was poor which tells a lot about the base.

[Razor]

Hi Jerry,

I have been watching this thread with interest, wondering what ingredients would have been available back in the 60's and 70's, and to be honest, it's pretty much the same as what is available today, especially for a base sauce.

I think if we are looking for the missing taste in ingredients, we may be going down the wrong path?

I'm beginning to think it's more to do with the cooking and the quality of the equipment!

Yeah, for sure, the top notch places would have had the big, industrial style burners installed but I can't help wondering what the little places had?  Maybe one or two domestic cookers?

What was the calibre of the chef?  Was he an accomplished Indian curry chef, or a family member who needed to be in employment to stay in the country? All of these things must have an effect on the end dish.

Could it be that the curries of old wasn't as good as they are today, technically?  They were certainly hotter, we know that but was they better?  Admittedly, my curry eating didn't really start until the 80's but even then, it was something that you ate, after a night of ale, not something that you did on a regular basis like, Friday night, fish suppers"  I know that some of the more established members crave the old style flavour but could it be based on a romantic notion, that it was better back then? 

Listen to some of the members recollection of the old style curry  "Much Hotter" and "A much thinner sauce" not to mention "They were much oilier back then"  Do any of these descriptions really make us believe that the curries were better back then?

I think the only way that we will ever crack this, is if we find ourselves an 80yr old retired Indian chef, who is will to give up his knowledge for the good of this forum....not going to hold my breath on that one.

Incidentally, I did a web search to see if there was anything that could shed some light on the subject.  There wasn't, but some members will be pleased to know that we get a mention on Wikipedia;

Curry house cuisine at home

The popularity of curry houses in Britain has encouraged a number of publications aiming to show how the curry house cuisine, as opposed to authentic Indian cuisine, can be recreated at home. Notable publications are Kris Dhillon's book "The Curry Secret" which was first published in 1989 but has been reprinted as recently as 2008. Dhillon reports having had experience working in her own Indian-style restaurant before publishing the book. In contrast, Bruce Edwards published a short series of articles in 1990 based mostly on deduction and experiments in trying to recreate his experiences as a restaurant customer. The series consisted of three articles published in the Curry Club Magazine. Edwards published a follow-up series in the same magazine three years later, using information he had since learned from a behind-the-scenes look of an Indian take-away restaurant. Edwards' articles are still used as a reference by members of the online forum "Curry Recipes Online", where he has also informally published a few brief further follow-ups.


Ray

[Stephen Lindsay]

Being Scottish I can personally vouch that the old style curries had a secret ingredient called Scotch Mist.

[Peripatetic Phil]

... a secret ingredient called Scotch Mist.

Would that be what they call uisge beatha in the Gaelic ?
** Phil.

[JerryM]

Razor,

much appreciate your thoughts. it's always usefull to step back and ask those arkward questions.

we're they better in the 70s - for me no with the exception of vindaloo. the madras was quite different and i think the bhuna although i've little experience of this.

was it after beer - a small yes. we were lucky to eat out at least 3 times a week. sunday afternoons were the fav and at least one of us was driving.

the cooking and the equipment for me today is crucial. at this 70s game i'm really sort of ball park - can i get anywhere like and then fine tune.

i too am convinced that most of the ingredient we have today existed then but in it's original form ie no pre made mixes. i don't believe you could buy tandoori masala. whether you could get it mixed for you i don't know. you certainly could for curry powder and not just one type of curry powder they would adjust it to your own tastes.

as an example on the ingredient front - take fresh coriander. this would have been grown in the UK as it does today. it would not have been available out of season. so for me this is not a 70s ingredient. i'm trying to approach the search along these lines.

the other side to this is that by forcing myself to go off the path i know to work i'm hoping to take on learning that i would otherwise miss. it's potentially a win win.

the big thing to crack 1st is the colour - without this the recipe is far too far off the track. i think the best description is more like crimson - it's certainly not a red or a hearing.

[Peripatetic Phil]

the big thing to crack 1st is the colour - without this the recipe is far too far off the track. i think the best description is more like crimson - it's certainly not a red or a hearing.

The more I think about this colour issue, the more convinced I am that they were using Tandoori Red (a powdered food colouring possibly no longer available for reasons of suspected (or even proven) carcinogenicity). I certainly had some in my cupboard at that time -- a rather large jar, in fact !  Allow the powder to escape, and everything it touched became indelibly stained crimson ...

** Phil.