Topic: Review ? Pat Chapman?s "The New Curry Bible", first published in 2004.

[Mark J]

About a year ago I decided to embark on a quest to learn how to cook the meals that are served in British Indian restaurants (BIR?s), the first source of knowledge I found was a book by Kris Dhillon ? The Curry secret, on reading this I thought my prayers had been answered, she explained all the secrets of the trade and it all sounded perfect. One of my favourite curries at the time was Chicken Tikka Masala so I decided to try that from Kris? book, it was a good curry but CTM it wasn?t, at this point I realised that Kris? book was probably too old now so I started looking again and found Pat Chapman?s book.


The new curry bible is subtitled ?The ultimate modern curry house recipe book? - sounded promising!

The book is a superb read, forgetting about the recipes for a minute the book is fascinating for any curry lover and has the best colour photographs I have seen in a cookbook. It goes into much of the history of curry dish by dish next to the recipes, goes into detail about differing curry styles around the world and describes the qualities of all the different ground/whole and herb ingredients in Indian cooking. While it is aimed at the Indian restaurant curry enthusiast it also has authentic dishes side by side to the BIR ones, which is interesting.

OK let?s get to the recipes. The book is split into the following sections:
Starters, Kebabs, Tandoori and Tikka. The curries themselves are in 3 sections: Top 16 curries, 16 favourite curries and 16 house specials. Then we have vegetable and dhal curries, side dishes and finally deserts.

As you can see its quite comprehensive with loads of recipes, the 16 top curries section is all the restaurant favourites: balti, jalfrezi, korma etc, the other 32 main curries are a bit more exotic and very interesting to read about.

Some people have complained about the structure of the book, you are constantly flipping back between pages to get to the various spice mixes and marinades but I found this not too bad.

OK, the bottom line, what are the recipes like? In a word ? varied. Some are top drawer like the balti recipe, prawn puree & madras, some are average or not quite right ? bhuna, CTM, onion bhajis. The biggest problem I have with the book is the base curry sauce I feel is not quite right or poorly explained and seeing as it is the basis for a lot of the restaurant lookalike recipes this is a problem. (see http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=62.msg215#msg215 for a discussion on it). I did mail Pat on the subject of this base sauce but didn?t get a very useful reply (although I was surprised to get any reply at all to be honest).

One other word of warning, the base curry masala mix, tandoori masala mix and garam masala contain ingredients that a lot of people will be hard pressed to find ourside of a very good asian grocer (beetroot powder, annato seed, black cardamom amchoor etc)

In summary I would rate it highly overall because it is so well presented and is such a good read, however it is not always spot on with the restaurant recipes and the base sauce recipe is iffy.? I might try out the recipes using Pete?s base instead.

[Mark J]

Here's the book on amazon, only available in hardback at the mo I think:

http://tinyurl.com/3jsvo

[Muttley]

Thanks for the review, Mark.

It's always good to have an unbiased opinion.

The requirement for the unusual ingredients you mention is a bit of a worry. I've scoured Southall, and I don't remember ever seeing beetroot powder.

I find that these unusual ingredients are a royal pain with a lot of book/magazine recipes. The authors should, at the very least, mention how important the unusual ingredients are to the recipe, give a mail/internet source for them, and preferably, some alternative.

[tempest63]

The "The new curry bible" is not a new publication but a re-release of the earler "The curry bible". The name was changed, I believe, because the book went out of publication and before it was republished Maddhur Jaffrey published her version of a "Curry Bible". But that should not distract from the book and how good it is. Personally I don't go for the restaurant style versions of curries but prefer the Authentic style dishes that Pat has in the book.

Pat will answer any sensible questions that you ask of him, he has done for me a couple of times, and he can be contacted from his website http://www.patchapman.co.uk/

It is worth looking at the "Pat Chapmans Balti Bible" also.

The aforementioned Maddhur Jaffrey Curry Bible is also well worth having, especially if you get it for Christmas as I did.

[Curry King]

While on the subject of books has anyone got:

Prashad - Cooking With Indian Masters

Someone told me that it was worth getting hold of but I can't seem to find it in the UK?

[tempest63]

While on the subject of books has anyone got:

Prashad - Cooking With Indian Masters

Someone told me that it was worth getting hold of but I can't seem to find it in the UK?

You can get it at abe books (advanced book exchange)

http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?imagefield.x=37&tn=prashad&imagefield.y=15

[merrybaker]

I enjoyed reading your review.? I think I'll take the book off the top of my wish list.?

I wonder how many restaurants really do use all those hard-to-find ingredients.? Maybe the more expensive ones do, but my guess is that the average takeaway tries to spend as little on ingredients as possible.? I'm always struck by Kris Dhillon's recipes which use the same few spices in all the dishes, but in differing proportions, and the dishes all taste different in the end.? And, likewise,? I was surprised to learn from these discussions that certain curries differ only in the amount of chilli powder.? No real point here... I'm just thinking out loud.?

[Phil]

I was surprised to learn from these discussions that certain curries differ only in the amount of chilli powder.

If you take a basic curry sauce (for example Muttley's iin the curry sauce thread, but it could be any that you like - assuming it does not have a great deal of chilli or aromatic spice in it), you can make the following curries by taking as much sauce as you want, adding some garam masala, and adding increasing amounts of chilli to make:

Chicken Curry
Chicken Mardas
Chicken Vindaloo
Chicken Phall

If you wanted to you could use a slightly different masala for each.

You could also add potatos (and perhaps a splash of vinager) to the vindaloo.

In the cheap and cheerful takeaways (and probably a good few resturants as well), they don't have the time or facilites to do anything much else.

[Mark J]

I wonder how many restaurants really do use all those hard-to-find ingredients.?

Bugger all I reckon, they are interested in producing the dishes as cheaply and as quickly as possible. I reckon the technique of the chef is way more important than the base ingredients

[merrybaker]

[Bugger all I reckon, they are interested in producing the dishes as cheaply and as quickly as possible. I reckon the technique of the chef is way more important than the base ingredients

Yeah, the people who went into restaurant kitchens didn't say they saw all kinds of new ingredients.? At least, they kept it a secret, if they did!