New videos from Curry2Go in Chorley

[Razor]

Hi Julian,

Many thanks for answering the questions mate.  So just to be clear, are you using Rajah in the videos then>

I'm From Manchester so could never support Man U!   

Tut tut tut, I'm an Audenshaw lad and have been a Red all my life (even when we were sh**) I go to most games but not away, not anymore.  That said, think I'll pay a visit to the City of Manchester council tax payers stadium, in Jan.  See if we can overturn that shocking 1-6 wollopin you lot gaves us

Joking aside mate, I'm loving what you're doing with the videos, and have bookmarked your webpage too.  Next time I'm on the way to Blackpool or camping in Croston, I may drop in to c2go

Ray

[natterjak]

Good to see you posting back to this thread Julian. For anyone wondering where that website is, here's a link to the new blog section from where the rest of the website is easily accessed.

http://www.curry2go-online.com/my-blog.html

[Whandsy]

Wow, after reading julians comment, i checked out the review from him of prashad. Don't think we'll be replicating their garam masala somehow, see below

julian v
Preston, United Kingdom
1 review

1 helpful vote
?Excellent Food- Kaushy's Garam Masala mix out of this world!?
Reviewed 26 November 2011
1 person found this review helpful
We visited Prashad after following the Family on 'Ramsey's Best Restaurants' I have to say the food and sevice was excellent! Having explained to Bobby that we had just opened our own small Indian takeaway, he kindly gave me a free sample of 'Kaushy's Special Garam Masala Mix. WOW!! This Garam Masala is fantastic and so aromatic, the smallest amount creates a wonderfull flavour, particularly when used just at the end of cooking just before serving. It's so good that I have been using it sparingly- at least till i can get back over to Bradford and pick up some more.

Prashad's pasion for cooking show's in the food they serve but the fact they have created their own special Garam masal blend, for me, shows their dedication to excellence!

Julian Voigt
Curry 2 Go- CHORLEY


Visited September 2011


Bobby Patel, Owner at Prashad, responded to this review
4 December 2011
Hi Julian, thanks for taking time out to share your love of Prashad, we are really pleased that you loved the garam masala, this is Kaushy's Grandma's recipe and consists of 26 ingredients. The are slow roasted and acred for for 3 weeks before stone milled to a perfect medium coarse grind. I hope your business is doing well and when I am in Cholrey we will bring more garram masala for you. Bobby

I guess it keeps our journey through to curry nirvana more interesting!

[JerryM]

CA,

appreciate the comment on the bunjarra - it's still on my mind. i will watch Julians video again and may have to make the onion "sauce" to understand if useful to me.

spiceyokooko,

all of my work on the smoke is in CA's original post. the post outlines how hard it is to pin down what causes it. in fact you can have too much of it and that's no good either. i had not seen a comment from CA relating to sugar. in fact sugar is probably my worst enemy. some days i say i'm going to get an ali pan. then the next day i decide not to. after cooking 11 off range of curries to try out infindforu's mix i firmly decided i have no need for Ali pan. i don't consider my black steel pan to be posh. it clearly does the job. my only difficulty is black debris. it does not help that i don't wash the pan in service. i also cook on full heat all through for both "spice" and "cream" dishes (read sugar). i know i should adopt slowboat for "cream" but find i get a slightly better result. the black debris is far more difficult to control in "cream" dishes. by contolling the timing of adding the ingredients (much like Chinese cooking) and the use of the chef spoon i find i can get away with the hot method for all dishes. in short i think the ali pan would help mitigate but there's more important on my todo list.

[curry2gochorley]

Hi Julian,

Many thanks for answering the questions mate.  So just to be clear, are you using Rajah in the videos then>

I'm From Manchester so could never support Man U!   

Tut tut tut, I'm an Audenshaw lad and have been a Red all my life (even when we were sh**) I go to most games but not away, not anymore.  That said, think I'll pay a visit to the City of Manchester council tax payers stadium, in Jan.  See if we can overturn that shocking 1-6 wollopin you lot gaves us


We just use Rajah mild madras in the mixed powder. The rest of the spices(corriander, haldi etc..) aren't always  Rajah. We make up our own blends too.
Joking aside mate, I'm loving what you're doing with the videos, and have bookmarked your webpage too.  Next time I'm on the way to Blackpool or camping in Croston, I may drop in to c2go

Ray

[ELW]

But my dad's my best critic as he's been eating Currys even longer than I have, even though he knows bugger all about cooking them. Whenever I shove a plate of my own curry in front of him, he scoffs the lot and says that was lovely and I really enjoyed that, (but could do with more salt  ) but you know what, it's still missing that certain 'something'.

As much as I hate saying it, I have to agree with him and that says it all for me really.

yer dad's got it, backslapping acheives nothing!

Regards
ELW

[JerryM]

appreciate the comment on the bunjarra - it's still on my mind. i will watch Julians video again and may have to make the onion "sauce" to understand if useful to me.

CA,

many thanks for pointing this out. i would have missed an important piece here. watching it back (and the dupiaza) i now realise i was wrong and it's nothing like bunjarra. it is as Julian says "onion gravy sauce".

i will need to make this as i've not made anything like.

i've never managed to get balti right. one recollection of curry in the BIR capital is that the odd cardamom was carried over quite often. i'd put this down to them being in the base. now obviously not (although for me they are crucial in base garam).

many thanks to both CA and Julian

ps the more you watch the videos the more things seem to jump out. i noticed this time that the 1st base goes in just after the spice. i always add 1 chef (4 tbsp) before the tom puree/spice and then cook out before the next stage. the length of cook i think depending on the dish - how deep the spice taste is. i do this because 1 chef protects the spices until they are all mixed in and the smaller volume stops the pan heat dropping. all interesting stuff

[ELW]

I agree. Furthermore, the figure of 5% is only a figure of speech, of course.

Apart from anti-spam duties I've found that recent time in my kitchen working by myself, has showed greater promise than hour after hour spent trawling through all the suggestions and mass of observations at this forum. It's serious data overload and it's nobody's fault but - face up to it - as a group we've failed big time. Forget the claimed 11,000+ members. Even if there are only 20 or 30 active members here, that's quite a big 'research and development department'. What do we have to show for about 7 years of R&D? No as much as some people might have hoped. Of course, I might be wrong. Some of you may well be making superb curries, rice, bread, etc as good as any BIR I've ever eaten at. You may not even realise how good you are. But when I suggested regional dinner parties to try and establish a benchmark for current standards, there was precious little interest. If one or two people were identified as truly outstanding by way of shared dining sessions, then we may be more inclined to listen to what they have to say. Currently, we don't know who they are. I'm sorry, but saying one's partner and friends say that you (I mean any one of you) make the best food they've ever tasted, isn't an independent enough assessment

Good post George, its hard to come out of that without getting backs up, very well put
I have failed to crack this so far!
ELW

[curryhell]

I agree. Furthermore, the figure of 5% is only a figure of speech, of course.

Apart from anti-spam duties I've found that recent time in my kitchen working by myself, has showed greater promise than hour after hour spent trawling through all the suggestions and mass of observations at this forum. It's serious data overload and it's nobody's fault but - face up to it - as a group we've failed big time. Forget the claimed 11,000+ members. Even if there are only 20 or 30 active members here, that's quite a big 'research and development department'. What do we have to show for about 7 years of R&D? No as much as some people might have hoped. Of course, I might be wrong. Some of you may well be making superb curries, rice, bread, etc as good as any BIR I've ever eaten at. You may not even realise how good you are. But when I suggested regional dinner parties to try and establish a benchmark for current standards, there was precious little interest. If one or two people were identified as truly outstanding by way of shared dining sessions, then we may be more inclined to listen to what they have to say. Currently, we don't know who they are. I'm sorry, but saying one's partner and friends say that you (I mean any one of you) make the best food they've ever tasted, isn't an independent enough assessment

Good post George, its hard to come out of that without getting backs up, very well put
I have failed to crack this so far!
ELW

Food for thought indeed :.  The forum as an R&D department is doomed to failure before it even starts.  Despite the efforts of some forum members to make their experiments as scientific as possible, the assessment of the results will always be flawed but not through any fault of theirs.  We take the specific quantities of ingredients (we introduce plenty of variables onions being one good example, Spanish, cooking , brown, red etc., add some spices (from different suppliers) and a slightly different cooking technique and we're already on the downward slope.   Then we try and assess the results and agree an objective conclusion ;D .  My assessment will be different to Ray's, his different to PaulP's which is different to Georges whose is similar to Jerry's but different again from Spicey's...........and it goes on. An R&D approach is not possible when you cannot control or limit the effects of  the variables and certainly not when you cannot remove the subjectivity from the results which will always abound in our field of interest.  We don't do these experiments in a lab but our kitchens with differing equipment.  This forum will never provide all the answers in one or several specific threads on how to cook BIR curry.  It has and will continue to provide ideas, information, details of experiments, members experiences etc.  The forum is more of a knowledge bank to  which and from which all members will make deposits and withdrawls.  Only the individual can decide how close they are to the end result and that very much depends on what they are looking for.  Will we all ever crack it all??   Very unlikely but just occasionally the effort will be rewarded and you believe you have moved just that little bit closer to where you want to be.
I think regional dinner parties was a splendid idea for a get together of like minded people who could enjoy good food (of a high standard and i'm sure it would be whoever was cooking it) and good discussion about the search for the holy grail.  It would be interesting when it came to the scoring though .  Would our assessment as a group be any more reliable than our friends or relatives I wonder condisering we all have slightly different ideas as to what we're looking for??  Perhaps we could reach a broad concensus of opinon - maybe .
I am not sure what the answer is or how we move forward into 2012.  But I will continue to search for the pot of BIR gravy at the end of the curry rainbow.  And of course I will provide any useful  feedback along the way, no matter how conflicting it may be ;D.  The real R&D department is in your own kitchen as George has just discovered .

The curry quest goes on.......and on..............and on.  Look forward to all your contribution in the coming year now matter how conflicting or controversial they may be

[Razor]

And now I'm going to add even more confusion with another conflicting viewpoint ;D

I would say that family and friends are IDEAL, when it comes to getting an honest opinion of one of our dishes, as Spiceyokooko shows with his dad.

I know that all my brothers and sisters are very blunt and straight talking and call a spade a spade.  Most of my friends are the same.  If my bro in law says to me that my bhuna is the best he's ever tasted, I know that that is what he believes.  This is the guy that told me on my wedding day (to my 1st wife) that she wasn't what you'd call a stunner is she?   and she wasn't (neither was I though :)

The other thing to remember about family and friends is, they are mostly local to you and therefor, there is a very good chance that their tastes are very similar to your own with regards to BIR/TA dishes.  When they make nice comments, they are infact measuring them (the curries) against the same/similar yardstick as yourself!

On the other hand, having your dishes judge by a fellow amateur chef, from a different area, with a different goal than your own, is fraught with problems.  "The Madras has got lemon juice in it but it doesn't have it in my fav TA", is just one example of how wrong it can go.  The regional differences will always be the hurdle to get over and that's never going to happen, IMO.  The only way a member will ever tick all the boxes for everyone is to make a dish that is the best that anyone has ever tasted, regardless of how it compares to the same dish from your region, somehow, I can't ever see that happening......can you?

Ray