Topic: Hello! There's more to this than I imagined!

[Curry Barking Mad]

Hi Phil,
Exploding Rice Ice..........I can't say I've ever experienced that.
Mick

Interesting !  It has certainly happened to mine, which why I no longer freeze it; I wonder what the difference might be ?

I'm not sure but I know I cook my rice to the point where there is still some resistance when squeezed between finger and thumb, how long do you cook your rice ?

I've just noticed your "beware the trolls of March" comment. I assume you are talking about the month and not the town of March.....or am I missing something??
Please let me know
Mick

[Peripatetic Phil]

I'm not sure but I know I cook my rice to the point where there is still some resistance when squeezed between finger and thumb, how long do you cook your rice ?

I can only answer that with any accuracy for Chinese rice for frying, since I don't actually have any specific times for pilau rice; for Chinese rice for frying, it is 12 minutes at full power (in a microwave oven, in a pyrex casserole with lid) and then 20 minutes at very low power just to drive off any residual moisture.  Pilau rice is far more experimental as far as I am concerned, and I have neither fixed recipe nor fixed times for it.

I've just noticed your "beware the trolls of March" comment. I assume you are talking about the month and not the town of March.....or am I missing something??
Please let me know

I didn't think there was a town called March anywhere near Rome, so when Caesar's soothsayer said "Beware the Ides of March" I think he must have been speaking of the month dedicated to Mars.  Certainly I am  ;D  But as this forum has been blissfully free of trolling for a while now, I shall remove the offending line.
** Phil.

[ootini]

Guys I just wanna say how much I appreciate the help you're giving me! I'm definitely more confident about what I'm planning now.

Phil, don't worry about the hi-jack and you've definitely inspired me, that looks bloody lovely. And as such, I've decided precooking chicken, lamb, veg and beef is simply going to be too much work for me to be able to relax and enjoy myself and actually get it all done. So I'm going to precook a little more chicken and drop the beef. This I think will give me a little more flexibility.

The basic plan is to produce four, single portion curries, and then allow each person, basically a quarter of each to sample, or fight over the one they like most. I might the portions slightly on the large size but I don't see this being too much of an issue.

Just out of interest, as a rule of thumb roughly how much base sauce (KD1 or other) is required for each single portion curry?

[solarsplace]

Progress report :

After about an hour and a half at full pressure, the onion, garlic, ginger and peppers were still clearly distinct; using a stick blender, these were then homogenised and the resulting liquid tasted.  It has a pleasant, vegetable-ey taste with a trace of a sharp edge.  What was very noticeable is that there was no unpleasant onion-ey smell at all at any point during the cooking.

Next stage involved the integration of the oil, tomato, turmeric and paprika, after which I stick-blended it again just for the hell of it.

Then to the final dish, a variant of Chicken Madras KD1/PT :

• 5 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 3/4 pint base sauce
• 8 oz pre-cooked Chicken
• 1 teaspoon Bassar Curry Masala (for flavour)
• 1 teaspoon Kashmiri Mirch (for colour)
• 1 teaspoon Degghi Mirch (for heat)
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 1 teaspoon Ground Cumin
• 1 teaspoon Methi leaves
• 1/4 teaspoon Chat Masala (to add a slight touch of sourness)
• 1/8 Lime, whole
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh Coriander stalk
• A little chopped fresh Coriander leaf for garnish

• Gently saut

[Peripatetic Phil]

Phil, don't worry about the hi-jack and you've definitely inspired me, that looks bloody lovely.

Thank you !

Just out of interest, as a rule of thumb roughly how much base sauce (KD1 or other) is required for each single portion curry?

I normally cook enough for two (what you see in the photograph is what was left after I had eaten as much as I wanted : Khanh was not home to eat this evening), and for that I use 3/4 pint base and 8oz pre-cooked chicken.  To be honest, I wouldn't feel comfortable recommending that you halve everything. simply because I cannot guarantee that it will work : better, maybe, to make what I regard as a standard double portion, and enjoy any leftovers on another day !

** Phil.

[Peripatetic Phil]

@phil - Lovely looking curry there very nice indeed! - you did't say how good it tasted though?

It tasted absolutely right, and confirmed my belief (sorry, I'm about to offend some forum members) that all this faffing about making and then reducing the Taz base is just not necessary -- I get far better results using the KD1 base (modified, on this occasion) and I really feel in control, whereas with the Taz base I feel it's controlling me.  Whether KD1 will also work for vegetable dishes remains to be seen : certainly those I have cooked with the Taz base have been good, and it will be interesting to see on my next foray into Sag Aloo whether the KD1-modified base will work as well.  I'll move copies of the base and Madras recipes to the proper thread, so they can be more easily found in future.

** Phil.

[Les]

Phil
Have you ever made any of the KD recipes out of the book? If you have, what did you think of them. Just been looking at her recipes and i would think they where a little bland, But there again she ran a restaurant and not a Takeaway, could be why no spice mix in the book i suppose, using freshly ground spices may give a better taste than a mix,

HS

[ootini]

With regards to portion control, this is quite new to me. I assume that a single chicken breast, chopped into 6/8 would be considered the right amount of meat for a single portion? And similarly 6/8 cubes of lamb would be a single portion?

[Peripatetic Phil]

Phil
Have you ever made any of the KD recipes out of the book? If you have, what did you think of them.

Yes, her recipes are my inspiration for Chicken Madras, Chicken Tikka and Tandoori Chicken.  None, as far as I am concerned, are perfect if you simply follow them without thinking, but if you use them as a starting point and then adjust them on the basis of experience and your own insights, I find they work very well indeed.  My basic modification to her Chicken Madras, for example, is to double the quantity of base per unit weight of meat, and to double the quantity of spices per unit volume of base, so I end up with twice as much base and four times as much spice as she recommends  -- "your mileage might vary", as they say ...

Just been looking at her recipes and i would think they where a little bland, But there again she ran a restaurant and not a Takeaway, could be why no spice mix in the book i suppose, using freshly ground spices may give a better taste than a mix

I will be honest, I have never understood why so many recipes use spice mix and/or curry powder.  With the former, all you are doing is adding standardised quantities of spices you already have; with the latter, you are virtually adding a complete unknown.  Far better, IMHO, to add each spice as needed; OK, if A, B & C all go in at the same time, then pre-mix them in a little tub to speed up preparation, but don't make up a jarful for later use because you then won't be able to adjust the proportions in the light of experience.

There is one benefit to spice mix that perhaps I shouldn't ignore; suppose that a given recipe needs 1 teaspoon of a particular spice mix, and that spice mix contains 5 spices A, B, C, D, E in the proportion 5:4:4:2:1.  It is very easy to dip your measuring spoon in a well-shaken jar of the mix, and bring out exactly what is needed for the dish; it would be extraordinarily difficult, without using an analytical balance and a great deal of time, to add individually 1/3 tsp A, 4/15 tsp B, 4/15 tsp C, 2/15 tsp D and 1/15 tsp E.  So a spice mix for a particular dish makes sense to me; a generic spice mix, to be added in different amounts to virtually everything, makes little or no sense at all.

My two penn'orth, for what it's worth (very little, these days !).

** Phil.

[Peripatetic Phil]

With regards to portion control, this is quite new to me. I assume that a single chicken breast, chopped into 6/8 would be considered the right amount of meat for a single portion? And similarly 6/8 cubes of lamb would be a single portion?

Sounds about right to me, but of course breasts can very considerably in size ("Johnson minor, stop sniggering at the back of the class !").  I like to buy large free-range birds, and would normally expect to be able to cut ten decent size pieces from one breast, which would then be enough for a good-size portion for two (I use the whole bird, so in practice each portion might contain breast, thigh, leg, back and maybe wing); if you buy a smaller bird, then I imagine one breast would produce a large portion for one but a small portion for two.

** Phil.