Topic: AIR - Butter Chicken Video

[beachbum]

On a cross cultural note, I'm a Geordie who has been over here for about 35 years but as an impoverished student in Cardiff in the 1970s whose "big eats" for the week was a Biryani or Vindaloo at an eating establishment in Roath or Canton and later moving back to Newcastle and eating similar in the Bigg Market, I don't find a heck of a lot different between the BIR and AIR outcomes for the likes of Madras, Vindaloo, CTM etc. Both let the spices and - most importantly the oils - to shine through which I think is the main thing, the gravies are the vehicles that allow this to happen.

[Aussie Mick]

Very interesting video Mark. Thanks for posting it.

If you feel that you could post the recipe for the butter gravy, it would certainly be mucho appreciated by me. Like CA, i too find a good AIR butter chicken to be very pleasant, and something that I would not have a clue how to cook at home. 

[beachbum]

On the subject of A.I.R. I volunteered to do the snacks for my home brew club meeting on Tuesday (20-30 attendees) so I'm bringing along a Chicken Madras and have made the base gravy today. The chicken has been precooked, much in the same way as Curry-2-go style and is in the freezer.

Without listing the recipe, which is really proprietory to the chef who runs the course but as a general indication how things are done in an AIR restaurant:

Oil is seasoned by frying whole spices

Then finely chopped onions are fried until brown and caramelised and soft



At this stage garlic ginger paste is added, then dry spices . These are really the equivalent of BIR dry mix powder, but note that all this goes into the gravy, not the cooking pan.





Tomato paste (not puree) is added plus some water to allow it to move around in the pan and it is simmered until the oil glistens.



Note the consistency of the "gravy". Also it's a lot redder than the flash photo. So in the cooking pan this thick gravy, and the precooked meat is added to more spiced oil then gradually heated and diluted with stock and water and finished (in this case with coconut cream) until the right consistency.

Just tasting the "gravy" it's sharp and spicy and chewy, and really you couldn't stand eating a tablespoon of it without wincing. Like I posted this is bottom up stuff not top down  ;D

Clearly this particular gravy already has its characteristics set in stone so I wouldn't be able to use it in a Vindaloo or a Korma, but perfect for a Madras. Which is why in A.I.R. there are a few different gravies for different "families" of curries which are fine tuned in the cooking pan with various extra spices and additions.

Now I'm doing a Madras - Chennai is well down the East Coast of India and in coconut country, and Madras in Australia seems to be prepared with a fair amount of coconut cream or dried coconut cream powder as it's not presumably a (for example) Punjabi style dish.

Will post results. I'm bringing sausages for those in the club who don't like curry. 

[natterjak]

Thanks for posting that beach bum and of course to mark who posted the video at the start of the thread. I'm sure we all appreciate the need not to propagate the recipes of the chef who is running the course and you're right to respect that. On the flip side I'm very intrigued by the discovery of this "alternate universe" of AIR curry cuisine and would love to give it a try, so when you, mark or whoever has developed your own versions to the point where you feel you could post a full recipe without infringing on the confidentiality of the recipes taught on the paid-for course, I'm sure we'll all be interested.

On one specific point, what's the difference between tomato paste and pur

[Aussie Mick]

Thanks for taking the time to post these pics BB.

Before discovering this site, this is more the style of cooking that I did. ie frying onions/ginger/garlic until caremalised, and then adding spices and going through a (according to madhur Jaffrey) a "bhuna" process, where you would cook and keep cooking the onion mixture and spices till the oil starts to separate before going on to the next stage.

I must say though, it is a style of cooking that always had something missing for me. And upon discovering CR0, I have never used this style of cooking since.....but I prefer BIR...hands down.

The AIR style of cooking produces OK food for me, but there is no (and I hate this term) WOW factor. It is just OK!!

I haven't bought an Indian meal, or visited an Indian restaurant since discovering this site, coz I don't need to. i have ate "second rate" Indian food since emigrating in 1996. Now though, i no longer need to. Thanks to the good people here who are sharing the knowledge. I hope you know what I'm saying BB. I'm not criticising, it's just my personal preference.

BTW natterjack, in this part of the world, tomato puree is more like a passatta. It's a liquidy tomato sauce. Tomato paste is just like UK tomato puree.

[beachbum]

I haven't done a "cook off" between the two styles yet but I've got a shedload of precooked lamb and stock (bought a leg and boned it out and cubed it). I might just freeze a portion of that gravy, run up a mini-BIR-gravy from Julian's ebook and do two parallel serves of madras using the same precooked meat and do the taste test. 

I also have a stack of dry mix powder as well that I made up a couple of weeks ago. The oils are identical as well as the garlic ginger paste so it should be an interesting taste off between the cooking styles.

[chewytikka]

Thanks for sharing and posting your video Mark
very interesting

Hi NJ
just been looking at Masala Marks early posts
He posted all the gravy recipes when he first joined, interesting reading.

The whole AIR thing, is Indian cooking, dummed down into a fast food catering style.
loads of prep, ready for assembling quickly to order.
I think this particular method is steeped in Indian cuisines long history.

When I was doing research a while back, I found a quote about Three pre prepared sauces, going back hundreds of years.
They were, Persian, Moghul and Madras
"The advantages of these sauces were to make an instant curry" So me think's, nothing's changed there then.
I also watched Hotel Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi cooking these sauces on YouTube.

cheers Chewy

[Masala Mark]

Hi All,

Sorry to take so long to get back regarding this.

The gravies used here are not the same as those I first posted on the site, different Chef, this one with 20+ years as an AIR chef, the other was only in his mid 20's!

They are not the same as Chef Harpal Singh's, quite different, but similar concept in that multiple gravies are used to create different dishes. Not so different in some regards to some BIR as Zaal has the Red Masala paste, which is very similar to our Butter Gravy, we have different spices and other ingredients. It appears more akin to the Zaal, Ashoka type style, the only difference being that we don't add lots of water to the gravies before making a curry. The chef's reason is that it stores better, ie more water means it goes off quicker, and also space, we have 6 different gravies, if these were all fully done with water it would take an incredible amount of room.

It's not the same as Madhur J's style either as this is making a concentrated gravy/paste that is then used with other ingredients to make curries from. I too had tried that style and also others, ie pureeing onions and it is not restaurant style.

I liken it to Thai cooking whereby they make multiple pastes, red, green, yellow etc and then use some of it when making the dishes. Not sure if they combine any of theirs though.

All our gravies are fried to very dark brown with the exception of one. Hard to say from your pic there BB, but should be really really dark. Also, when tasting, they should taste very nice as is, but it is a concentrate so it should be strong and as you mention you wouldn't eat a spoon full of it.

The gravy that BB was making was the Basic Onion Gravy, it is used in the following non-vegetarian dishes:

Korma
Madras
Kholapuri
Kadai
Jalfrezi
Palak Gosht / Beef Saag etc
Beef/Lamb/Chicken Rogan Josh
Mango Chicken/Mango Beef etc
Murg Masslam
Bhuna
Do Piaza

I don't know how it compares to BIR as I haven't had BIR. I have tried many types of BIR cooking from the site and others ie Dipu, and none of them tasted like what I was hoping, ie AIR and a particular AIR that I consider the best I have ever tasted.

What I do know is that it can be done at home and taste the same and like Panpot said in his threads, it really is the end of it.

On the weekend, we had 26 people working in groups of 5 and one of 6, each making Butter Chicken and Vegetable Korma, and they all did it on gas camping burners and with 15 dollar non-stick fry pans from local grocery store. They did this by themselves with the Chef and myself helping each of the groups along the way. This was there first time cooking it this way and it was supurb. I even took some of the leftovers home for the families dinner last night, it was perfect.

They also did Onion Pakora, and Naan (Saag Paneer) bread cooked on stove top and it was light, fluffy, soft and everything a naan should be, well at least one that wasn't cooked in a tandoor.

Regards,
MM

[Khadidja]

Hello, Can we have the butter chicken recipe please as your chef made it? Thanks in advance.