Topic: BIR Dhansak for 40ish people based on 'Gezh's London Dansak'

[Tomdip]

While I love making individual curry portions from a base sauce - doing curry nights in my pub mean I have had to make up larger amounts on occasion. 

In the past I made big 1 pot all-in curries from various traditional curry recipes but found they were lacking in the BIR flavour that I was trying to achieve. 

I then started making big pots of curries from 1 batch of KD base and multiplying my curry ingredients by 5-7 (except salt and chilli) and got some great results. 

However making even larger curries involved a lot of guess work on the spicing and this method increased the number of cooking stages - 1 make base 2. pre-cook meat  3. Make up curry.

The beauty of big batch cooking is it is quite hard to really cock it up - and reasonably easy to rectify any problems (in comparison with individual curries anyway).  There is a lot more lee-way either side with spicing, heat, saltiness etc.

So not sure you can qualify this as a BIR dhansak - though my intention was to make it as close to that as possible. 

Recipe
Started by making 2 x Bruce Edwards base, which was quite brave as I have only used KDs in the past. 

I did some multiplications of my slightly tweaked Gezh's Dhansak recipe and worked out I needed the following:

1 litre oil
2 x Bruce Edwards Base
1 kg yellow split lentils + 500g red lentils made into a basic dall
3 tsp salt
8 kg pre cooked chicken breast (just boiled)
30 tbsps Garlic/Ginger puree
300 ml tomato passata

spice mix
30 tsp Madras curry powder
20 tsp Garam Masala
9 Tbsp Kasoori Methi
12 tsp amchoor

sweet/sour mix
250 ml sugar
200 ml mango chutney
250 ml lemon juice

smokey/dark mix
20 tbsp Ketchup
20 tbsp soya sauce

Chopped coriander 1.5 bunches

The method:

I made the base the day before, and the dall which was a simple water, turmeric, lentils simmered for an hour till I got the consistency I wanted.

I then heated 3/4 of oil and fried the garlic/ginger puree for a min or 2

Then added the spice mix and stirred for another min.

I then added all the base and the cooked dall - and heated for a while to get up to temperature

At this point I added half the sweet/sour and smokey/dark mix and tasted till I got the flavour balance right in my opinion (I then whacked the lot in!)

I then poured the curry over the chicken - and chilled ready for the following day.

To reheat I heated to oil and slowly bought to a simmer - stirring regularly as the lentils tended to sink to the bottom and stick to the pan.

The curry turned out really well - needed a touch more chilli - but cooking for lots of people with various chilli tolerances means you have to keep it reasonably mild.  Sold 40 portions and still had some left over to give little pots away for seconds!

Some naff mobile phone pics attached:

cooking the base and the dall


Lots of pureed base


Cooking the curry in 2 saucepans


Curry ready for re-heating - more smokey mix making it look darker


Lots of poppadoms


Serving on the night


Was too busy afterwards to take any pics - but it looked great on the plate - and we had lots of happy customers!

I had also made up a pot of veggie curry, a rice cooker full of pilau rice, a naga-chilli sauce to spice up the curry and about 60 poppadoms!

[Razor]

Tom,

I don't think I can put into words how absolutely amazed I am

My respect for you has just gone through the roof fella ;D  What a titanic effort.  Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Can I ask, are you making a decent profit on your curry sales? I really hope you are because you thoroughly deserve to!

Is it just curries that you sell, or do you offer starters too?

Unbelievable mate, bloody well done.

Ray (still in shock)

[Peripatetic Phil]

Wow.  Absolutely gobsmacked.  What can I say ?!  Many many congratulations, and one question : if you were to repeat the exercise, would you vary the recipe in any way ?

** Phil.

[George]

I agree your post is superb - perhaps we should have a "best post of the month" award. I've never seen recipe sub-sections for aspects like sweet & sour before, but that is so helpful to understand some of the rationale, as first introduced by Gezh. Your customers must be lucky people. Most stuff I eat in pubs tastes like 'boil in the bag'. Your photos are excellent too, regardless of the camera type.

[Tomdip]

thanks for the compliments chaps - I am sort of used to doing uber-portions of curry.  Used to run a curry-friday in my old pub where I had 4 woks on the go and offered all the curry house standards. Only got a normal flat kitchen here so it is difficult to be as ambitious as I used to be.   I am not a chef though - just a curry lover like all on here.

I had never managed to crack the "dansak flavour" till I tried Gezh's method here - so its thanks to him I made this recipe up.

Would say the Dansak was the most time consuming to do - as I wasn't too happy with the flavour and did some fixes (adding some more of the sweet/sour mix) as it was re-heating.

I have done quite a few curry events here - making 40 portion servings of Rogan, Korma, Achar, my variation of CTM, and a Methi (which wasn't too great).  so Phil - I will repeat the exercise - though will do a different recipe next time - the customers are always asking when the next curry night is.

Sold 40 portions at ?5 a pop -  not too big a markup though the beer sales are up a lot and it makes for a good night in the pub.

[solarsplace]

Very, very, very, very, very impressive!!!

Thank you for the post. Please post more pics when you have the chance!

That stack of poppadoms alone is amazingly massive - how long did it take you to fry those? 

[Unclebuck]

Great post! thanks for the pic's to... where is your pub?? you might get a few more visitors!! 

[Peripatetic Phil]

Phil - I will repeat the exercise - though will do a different recipe next time - the customers are always asking when the next curry night is.

OK.  What I actually meant, though, is if you were to do a dhansak again, would you use exactly the same recipe ?  I ask mainly because of the very high garam masala content, which struck me as unusual, and I wondered whether, with the benefit of this experience, you might adjust the proportions and/or vary the recipe in other ways next time.

** Phil.

[Tomdip]

The Garam Masala wasn't overpowering at all - This may have been for a couple of reasons - it went in early on in the cooking and become a background flavour - especially as the curry was reheated the following day.

One problem I find in bulk curries is getting the spicing right and I will often add a concentrated spice mix until I am happy with the flavour.

The dansak came out pretty spot on - and I have been eating dansak as my curry of choice in takeaways/restaurants for 10 years or so.  I would only have added a bit more lemon juice on serving and more chilli!

[Peripatetic Phil]

OK, great : dhansak is also one of my favourites, so (suitably scaled down), I shall have to give this a go.  I always choose lamb/mutton/goat dhansak rather than chicken, so the main problem will be ensuring that the meat is sufficiently tender, but I do now feel motivated to have a go !

P.S.  I join with the others in saying "tell us where your pub is" : we could have a CR0 meeting there, perhaps ?

** Phil.