Mmmmm..........delicious.
Sorry for the late reply all. Thanks for all the positive comments on my revisited Madras. Don't get me wrong it tasted as good as an average vindaloo but it had lost the flavours of my first attempt at CT's Madras, or they had been masked by the tikka meat and the extra chilli. Just to clarify i used CT's original method which excludes onion and green pepper (tarka as Abdul refers to it).
So tonight it was time to make it again without the tikka meat and extra chilli powder. Made it to spec, using the same ingredients as the first time: Abdul's enhanced base (ran out of CT's quite a while ago)and Zaal mixed powder. This time i didn't add any fresh tomato just a few chopped chillis right at the end of cooking for the chilli heat and so as not to affect the flavour of the sauce. Unfortunately, i didn't have any fresh coriander tonight so if it's only a notch off my first attempt i'll put it down to that
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These are the results:
Dished up
A little closer
Texture clearly visible now
Tonights supper - the plate was again mopped clean. I really needed a chappati to do it properly :
and the same lighting as for the other pictures to do it justice
Again i was very pleased with the results. Hardly any difference from my first attempt. I had this with plain boiled basmati rice so as not influence the flavour. It had more heat this time than my first attempt but that was down to the chillis. I did miss the subtle background hint of fresh coriander though
. All in all, i'm well happy with how this has turned out. It deserves the reputation that it has developed as a very fine BIR madras. Given the rich combined flavour of garlic, tomato, spice and chilli (the lemon just about discernable)that all come together to produce the complex taste and depth of flavour, I now understand why people enjoy Madras so much and are so keen to replicate it. Given the very few and simple ingredients of the dish, achieving the BIR smell and flavour has proved very elusive indeed.
I am very confident that if i cooked this and served it to a regular Madras aficionado, I wouldn't receive any complaints. However, i still feel the need to produce CA's and Abdul's madras and do a comparison alongside CT's to see how they all compare. But to do this and arrive at a fair conclusion i would need the appropriate bases and spice mixes as obviously the end result would be slightly different using others. No time to do this at the moment but I may just try all three using the same base and spice mix to see if there are any obvious front runners IMO. But therein lies the problem. We all have different expectations and are used to what we eat regularly in our own areas up and down the country. But it will be intersting nevertheless and i'll get to eat loads of curry into the bargain, so a worthwhile exercise ;D ;D
Topic: Chewytikka's madras revisited ( 22,441 )
