Topic: New Balti book

[chewytikka]

Cassia bark 5 x 5cm pieces   The cassia bark I have looks quite hard and I wondered how it blends in a spice mill ?

Like Livo, a mortar and pestle is an easy solution for this amount.
Just a good bashing and breaking up, before you machine grind it down to a powder.

The problem you have with Cassia Bark is the colour! It can turn your final Masala very dark
and sometimes close to black, especially if your roasting all the other spices before you grind.
Which in turn gives the wrong colour to a curry.
Avoid any black bark or you maybe better off using the much lighter coloured Cinnamon
which is the inner bark of the tree.

cheers Chewy

[JarvisMadras]

Thanks for the info from the above posters

Well I have made the Balti masala and the Balti Garam masala.........Also made the Base sauce (Balti) today

compared to the normal bases I make it has very little ingredients....but having said that the Balti Masala spice mix included in the base does contain a large amount of spices....

Saturday night will be the test . . . Like a previous post I will go for the basic Chicken Balti.

I have a feeling that a better base from this forum along with the Masala spice mix and Garam balti mix will work better...

Regarding the Cassia bark I did give it a go in the Pestle and mortar before adding to the spice grinder...it worked fine.....

So I stuck to the book 100% and can always adjust according to taste at a later date

Thanks for everyones help with this

[livo]

I look forward to reading your follow up later, especially if you are following the book 100%.  You could well look forward to a nice dish with the basic Chicken Balti. I added some sliced red and green capsicum plus some mushroom from memory and it produced a nice dish. I did use a base gravy I already had but it shouldn't be too different.

I used the book recipe for Tandoori Chicken last night with a minor substitution of Tandoori Masala in place of the Chilli Powder and reduced the marination time. It worked a treat and produced beautifully moist and tasty chicken.

[Unclefrank]

I don't use the base from this book any more i just use my regular base, which is JB's base, because of the Balti Powder mixes i use from the book i have not really noticed any difference in flavour and my customers haven't commented either.
 I do use a slightly thicker base when making a Balti, if that makes sense, i don't water down a certain amount of base. I do make a lot of base so i can make one base thick and the other as JB states in his recipe.