Topic: Muttley's sauce - And another curry sauce - rambling version

[Muttley]

Having only a couple of days ago posted a thread calling for people to consider freeing themselves from the desire to emulate resturant food, it might seem a little odd that I'm now posting a thread on making a resturant curry sauce.

It is just that after posting the thread, I once again started musing on how to get what the average British Indian Resturant (BIR) gets. Instead of attacking the problem on the basis of ideas and sauces other people had already posted, or, indeed, old attempts of my own, I tried to think about what must go on in BIR's, many of whom have very small kitchens, and yet manage to produce a large range of dishes, often to an excellent standard.

One thing is for sure: they can't prepare each dish from scratch, marinating the meat first as one would with Indian home cooking. Considering what's possible, and what I've seen from a couple of open plan takaway kitchens, each of which seemed to have an unbelievably small area available for the number of dishes they could come up with, I came to the following conclusion (which, I'm sure many others have come to before - hence this sub forum).

They obviously have one or two basic sauces from which all other sauces are derived (probably one with youghurt, and one without). These sauces will be minimally spiced. The only spces that will be added are those that need to cook for a long time with the other ingredients in order to completely combine, and gain that elusive depth that BIR sauces seem to have.

Clearly, a restuarant preparing as many dishes as the average BIR will want a basic sauce with no keynote spices, as these would interfere with the spicing of the individual dishes.

From my experience, it seemed to me that these minimum spices are probably limited to aesofetida, turmeric and cumin. Corriander may also be one of these base spices.

The other important point about BIR cooking is that it is obviously impossible for them to keep cooking up small batches of basic sauce. They'd get into a terrible state trying to keep up with varying demnds. Neither, I'm pretty sure, will they throw away the left over sauce at the end of each sitting.

My guess is that they keep a large pot of basic sauce on the go all the time, and top it up as the level goes down with batches that they either cook on a continuing basis, prepare and chill/freeze or even buy in.

So the sauce they are actually using could well contain very small quantities that are weeks old, with ever larger proportions of newer batches. Whether or not the presence of elements of the sauce that may have been being cooked for days actually has any effect on the flavour/texture I don't know.

One further point. The sauce must be sufficiently liquid that it can be left without glooping or sticking. If there was any tendency to stick, then at some point it would stick, and the whole system would eventually grind to a halt.

So, this is what I did.

Heated about 200ml of oil (yes, I know most basic sauces use more, but bear with me - I couldn't see any logical reason to, and this worked).
Added a level tablespoon of chopped ginger, and a similar quantity of chopped garlic. The temperature of the oil was such that the garlic and ginger made a quiet sizzeling sound, and gradually turned brown over the course of about ten minutes. This is to allow it to cook thoroughly without burning.

About two minutes before the garlic and ginger was browned, I added: 1/2 tsp aesofetida, 3 tsp Turmeric, 3 tsp ground cumin, and 1/2 tsp ground chilli.

Two minutes later I added four large sliced onions and stirred them around to let the oil cover them (don't know why - superstition, perhaps). I then added enough water to almost cover the onions.

This mixture was then allowed to simmer quite gently for an hour.

At the end of the hour a can of chopped tomatos was added - simmering continued.

An hour later this mixture was pureed with a hand blender.

Up to this point I had been cooking it in a large stock pot so that I could use the blender without covering te kitchen with sauce. I now transfered the mixture to two saucepans. I added a teaspoon of ground corriander to one, and set them both on a bare simmer, and left them for 4 hours, just giving them the occasional stir to make sure they weren't sticking (they weren't).

At the end of this time, what did I have ?

Well, two pots of something that looked exactly like the sauce that a typical Madras or vindaloo comes in. The taste, whilst obviously not being anything like a good curry (although I'd swear I've been dished up with a "Madras" that was made with something like this), has that unmistakeable depth that BIR curries have.

The sauce with the corriander has a slightly brighter, fruitier flavour. I don't think it was necessary to add it to the basic sauce, but it wouldn't do any harm if your final curry should have corriander flavour. It seems to be a very robust spice that does not degrade with long cooking.

The next step was to try the sauce to actually make a dish.

To do this I simply fryied some onion until golden, added some diced chicken and cooked until the chicken was done. Five minutes before the end I added a half tsp of garam masala.

The result was something that as far as I could tell cound not be distinguished from a BIR Madras. I've yet to try the experiment, but I'm pretty sure that if I put it in a foil container, and offered it to someone alongside a good takeaway, they would never be able to say which dish came from the resturant. (They might be able to differentiate it from one that came from a particular resturant with which they were familair, of course).

Well, sorry for the ramble, but this is something I've been trying to do, off and on, for a long time, and I wanted to share some of the thoughs behind what I did, as well as the recipe. I'll post a short version as well.

[Mark J]

Very interesting read mutley, I think most of us have a reasonable idea what goes on in the kitchen of an Indian restaurant and this seems very similar to many base sauce recipes (apart from the asfotedi).

I have been inside the kitchen of my local (which serves fantastic quality food, the best Indian I have ever been in) and they only have one stock pot on the go, they also have containers of precooked meat and veg, I haven't seen the chef cook a dish yet but next time I go I intent to watch if the owners will let me (which I'm sure they will)

[Yousef]

Interesting reading Muttley I will give this a go myself, I am assuming you just increase the amount of Chilli powder to get the Madras heat.

[Muttley]

Well, I'd add it when you actually use the sauce to make the specific dish.

I've been experimenting with this, and I'm wondering whether one should even add tomatoes to the basic sauce. You can certainly make a creamy sauce by adding the basic sauce, gradually, to some youghurt/cream that is already cooking, but it does end up orange. For curries such as Passanda, Korma and Malay, for example, it would definitely yield a sauce of the wrong colour.

Is there any flavour blending between the tomatoes and the other ingredients that takes longer than a few minutes to achieve? Certainly the next batch of this I make will omit the tomatoes.

I wanted to make the sauce as basic, and hence as versatile as possible. This is why there are no "bells and whistles" included.

Also, please note that whilst the finished sauce looks exactly correct in its saucepan (because all the oil is floating on the surface), when you use it to make a dish, it no longer looks quite like a BIR dish, because I used less oil, and so the finished curry doesn't have the little pools of oil that you get with a resturant curry. Of course, you could simply double the quantity of oil, and then it should be a dead match, but not everyone actually wants that much oil with their food - even if it does improve the eating experience a little.

[Mark J]

Checkout Pete's base sauce recipe, it uses 1 tin of tomatoes but with more onions.

I think adding tomato to the base sauce is right but maybe your ratio is too high on the tomato side.

We have heard that quite a few chefs throw in the odd potato and carrot to a base sauce, I like the idea of a carrot or 2 as this will increase the sweetness and I am finding that my curries are not quite as sweet as my local Indian, while they are almost certainly just using sugar I would like to find a natural alternative? .

[Muttley]

Two experiments

The first experiment was to determine whether or not further cooking of a basic sauce would change the flavour.

I reserved some of the basic sauce I had already made, and which had been cooked for a total of 6 hours. I then simmered the remainder for a further two hours. After warming the reserved sauce to the same temperature as that whch had undergone the extended cooking, I compared the two. There really doesn't seem to be much difference at all. Certainly the colour and texture hadn't changed.

The second experiment was to attempt to determine what difference it would make if the onion was browned before it was boiled. I made a puree of onion, garlic and ginger, in the same proportions at the original sauce. I fried some turmeric and ground cumin for a couple of minutes. I then added the puree, turned the heat up, and stirred continuously until the mix was dark brown. At this point the mix tasted of nothing but caramalised onions - that flavour swamping all others. I added a little water and simmered this for two hours. At the end of that time I tasted the result, and found it hadn't been changed by the boiling.

Adding a samll quantity of this onion to the sauce made it a little sweeter, and gave it a fraction more depth.

The first conclusion I reached was that cooking for much more than 6 hours doesn't make much difference (although, people with more sensitive tastebuds may spot something).

The second concusion was that a certain amount of browning of the onions will add a little depth of flavour, and a little sweetness. This may or may not be required for the recipes you wish to make with the basic sauce. I think on the whole it would probably be better to brown some onion for the particular dish you are making, rather than have it present in the basic sauce, but it depends on what you want to tend to cook.

[Muttley]

Checkout Pete's base sauce recipe, it uses 1 tin of tomatoes but with more onions.

It's certainly going to make a delicious sauce, but it's got a lot of flavours in it. I want something with the absolute minimum of flavouring - just what is needed to get that BIR style gravy.

I think adding tomato to the base sauce is right but maybe your ratio is too high on the tomato side.

The trouble with adding any tomato is that when you then add youghurt/cream, you will end up with something orange (even if pale), whereas several curries require something nearer to very light brown.

It's certainly correct for Madras/vindaloo, but I doubt it needs to be in the basic sauce - a little tomato puree when you make the disk will do. Of course, if you know that you're going to use all the sauce for the type of curry that needs tomato in, then it might as well go in the base.

We have heard that quite a few chefs throw in the odd potato and carrot to a base sauce, I like the idea of a carrot or 2 as this will increase the sweetness and I am finding that my curries are not quite as sweet as my local Indian, while they are almost certainly just using sugar I would like to find a natural alternative? .

Carrots and potatoes both contain starch which will change with the long cooking. I may experiment with those. See comments about browning some of the onion in post above, for extra sweetness - might help.

[Mark J]

I will post Pat Chapmans base sauce recipe from the New Curry Bible over the weekend (I'll also do a review of the book), IIRC it doesnt contain tomato at all (I could be wrong its been a while since I looked at it)

[Mark J]

And here it is, this is taken from Pat's recent book "The New Curry Bible", first published in 2004. I will write a review of this book and post it on this forum soon.

Curry Masala Gravy

4oz ghee
5.5oz garlic cloves finely chopped
4oz ginger finely chopped
2.25 lbs Spanish onions chopped
1 pint water
9oz curry masala paste

Method:

Heat ghee on high and stir fry the garlic and ginger until they have become translucent

Lower the heat and add the onions bit by bit until they have all become brown and caramelised

Add the water and puree with a blender

At this point Pat?s instructions tail off a bit, he says you can freeze it now and add the curry masala paste later or you can add it now but he doesn?t give any further instructions. If I were to add the curry masala paste now I would probably simmer the whole lot for another hour.

The curry masala paste is made up of about 16 spices and I wont post it here, I suggest using any old curry powder recipe instead but you must make a paste of it otherwise you may add to much, I think the last time I tried this base I only added half the amount of curry masala paste as it was a bit overpowering.


Im interested to hear if anyone else has had any luck with this from Pat?s book as when I first tried to make this curry base it turned out a bit dodgy, it had a harsh taste which I later found out was the onions.

It was probably my fault as I didn?t use Spanish onions but more likely I didn?t cook the onions for long enough, I suggest if you do try this you make sure the onions are very well cooked (they should be brown). One other thing you can do to remove the bitterness is to blanch the onions in boiling water before using them, this seemed to help.

[Muttley]

It never ceases to amaze me how no disaffected Bengali chef pops up on any of these forums to tell us exactly how it's done. Instead, they must be laughing their heads off at our desperation, when the precise method is common knowledge to them, produced to popular acclaim every single night in thousands of towns throughout the UK.

It's probably because it's actually so straightforward that it would never occur to them that anyone finds it difficult. And, they probably don't tend to hang around on sites dealing with Indian resturaunt cooking

How long will it be before someone produces a range of DIY home made curries which most people would agree are pretty indistinguishable from the restaurants? Then the search will be over, and this forum can presumably draw to a close. The Internet has been big business for at least six years, but it still hasn't happened!

I'm sure that's possible now, (especially if they were frozen), but I doubt they would ever be that much of a success because even if people did produce really authentic BIR curries, the "going for an Indian" atmosphere just isn't there. Even the atmosphere in your home is different if you get a takeaway, compared to cooking the food yourself.

I've cooked this food using this sauce for dozens of people now, and they all say it produces curries "just like resturaunt ones".

I just popped in to check this original method to see if I'd 'drifted' away from it over the last year.