What do yo make of the following dish?

I posted this elsewhere recently which didn't get much response so i'm sure some of you have already seen it but would like your thoughts on the idea.

Ignore my poor attempt at making it look chefy, but what is on the plate is a take-away from the Shanaz that I have never experienced before anywhere and one that surprised me quite alot. Infact, it surprised alot of the restaurant staff too who all sampled a tasting plate prior to me ordering it.

The principal of the dish is the lamb and is what caused the surprise. It is simply pre-cooked lamb that has been reheated in the Tandoor. It looks burnt and for all intents and purpose, it probably was, but the picture doesn't help. The lamb itself was extremely juicy and tender but a crispy outer texture. The flavour was subtle with a slight warmth of chili. The taster in the restaurant was even better, what made my plate was driven 10 miles down the road before being plated.

The dish was served with lots of caramelised onions a few of which you can see on top of the meat and accompanied with the tomatoes and peppers. I had this with a vegetable rice and thoroughly enjoyed it. After taking the picture, I piled the rest of the lamb and rice on top and devoured it!

I highly recommend asking your local to do this for you if they are willing. Eitherway, i'd love your thought's on it.

Well i'm not ashamed but this went down a treat!

I love rice plain, basmati, short grain, long grain, arborio, etc.....

I love it in its plain form, but I know others are not so keen. So I just wondered, amongst us, who is and who isn't addicted to rice as I am?

What is your favourite way to cook and eat it?

Last night I popped in to order a TA and asked Bubba one of the waiters, if he could suggest something that's not on the menu. He's quite good at this and I have enjoyed many a suggestion from him in the past. After explaining that I was looking for a lighter portion rather than a main, rice, bread etc., he suggested the following: Chicken Tikka Pakora starter and Brinjal Aloo Bhaji side.

It suddenly dawned on me that I have never had a pakora and certainly not come across tikka pakora before. In my mind I had pictured small diced up chicken tikka in a batter and deep fried. Concerned as to whether it would survive the journey home Bubba said "don't worry I get Chef to make it extra crispy". "Why not!" I said, and off he went to give Chef the order. I gave thinking as to what going to come out of the kitchen in fear of it being overly deep fried.

On my return home and plating up I was surprised to see normal sized pieces of Chicken Tikka deep fried in a commercial bread crumb (the sort you might find on a fish finger). I didn't know what to make of it and continued to spoon out (rather turn foil dish upside down over plate and dollop) the brinjal aloo bhaji on the plate. Off I went to the living room, plate and glass of beer in hand.

What can I say, the Chicken Tikka Pakora was fantastic. The chicken was really moist and the bread crumb a delight, it was certainly alot different to what I had envisaged. The flavour was also extremely good aided by the sensation of the crumb. In my mind, I have concluded that this was made simply from raw marinated chicken tikka which was then rolled in the a breadcrumb which may or may not have seasoned or spiced and then deep fried.

So my question is, has anyone else ever experienced something similar to this?

Courtesy of the Shanaz, tonight's meal is a Chicken Baguni, which I have nick named the Zonda.

The dish is essentially a madras with chicken tikka, tomatoes and aubergine. Its a wonderful dish, if a little heavy heavy on the oil.

Not I a dish I was familiar with and it isn't on their standard menu. Has anyone tried this dish or indeed has a bonafide recipe. I don't think it will be hard to replicate, but thought i'd ask.

Oh and it was devoured with a Tandoori Roti and onion salad.

I've never seen a link to the following recipes so thought I would post this. I Never knew that Spices of India had a huge selection of traditional style recipes, the ones I had seen always required an advertised product like Mr Huda's so and so paste. So was quite surprised when I bumped into these.

http://www.spicesofindia.co.uk/acatalog/Recipes.html

I've always only ever experienced chicken breast even if I opted for thigh, but a conversation I had tonight begged me ask the question.

I am trying to ascertain from those members fortunate to have eaten truly old school, if the chicken they were served was presented on the bone or indeed chunks pulled from a small whole chicken.

I shall be going back to finish the conversation and hopefully get more information, i'll report back in due course. But for now, I look forward to your replies.

Cheers,

Malc.

Did you receive my reply to your PM? 

A first for me tonight, was a Chicken Ceylon from my local. I thoroughly enjoyed this dish almost like a grown up korma of sorts, which took me way back. Of course it was very grown up and needed to be savoured with respect.

Looking at what I was served and the recipes I have seen, I have but one question: Does your local serve this dish with a reddish colour coming from tomato pur

Decided to have a go at the Rajma Curry that H4ppy_chris kindly posted. First thing that I had to decide was the quantity I was going to cook as it was clear the recipe was going to feed more than the one person dining tonight, namely me.

The second problem I encountered was when I arrived home with several items of shopping that were needed for the curry, a tin of red kidney beans and chopped tomatoes. Well the kidney beans turned out to be in a tomato and chilli sauce so I had to rinse the sauce from them leaving less than I wanted. But as it turned out later, this was not detrimental by any means.

But now I had already deviated from the recipe I decided to look online to research the dish further. I found loads of recipes and watched a video at Sanjeev Kapoor which was quite interesting. So with all this in mind, to Chris' posted recipe I also added a black cardamon and replaced part of the coriander powder with garam masala and added some julienne ginger. The only other change was not to use stock and added just half a tin of water to the tomatoes before blending them as I had less kidney beans than expected. I know what your thinking, I changed the recipe somewhat, well maybe but that's they way it worked out tonight.

All I can say is thank you Chris, I thoroughly enjoyed this dish and look forward to having it again and again. It was funny as I was sure there was meant to be ground beef in it, but there you go. Moving forward, this is a dish I feel would cope with a medley of main ingredients, meat, fish or vegetable.

After failing to decide what to have for dinner and the wife having already eaten, I decided it was the opportune moment to have a go at the Viceroy Omelette. The Omelette was made to spec though I was tempted to add some chopped mushrooms. Served it with a minted salad and Aloo Jeera.

Will I be making it again, oh yes. I was really surprised how much I enjoyed it. I don't know why I thought it would be perhaps not to my palette but it was very tasty indeed. I might cook the onions a little in advance of adding the remaining ingredients next time as I felt they were still a little undercooked, and despite using 2 finger chilli's I feel there is room to add 3, but other than these very minor observations, it was thoroughly fantastic.

I have never asked this question before, neither to myself or the forum. I just assumed that Patak's pastes were a fairly new concept, introduced at some point in the last 15-20 years or so. I for one have been keen to develop recipes without the use of Patak's pastes. Even to the point that I have ignored recipes in the past for the simple inclusion of pastes. Thankfully, that is something I can rectify.

But I was recently intrigued by the timeline and brief history about Patak's pastes, that can be found on their website. It proclaims that Patak's went to into major supermarket distribution, way back in the mid seventies, almost 35 years ago. It doesn't say for which products, but '84 saw the purchase of their current head quarters, so clearly they had a massive market share of all things curry.

This begs the question as to what point did this filter into the BIR kitchens that we know and love today. Are we also foolish to think that the BIR recipes we 'remember', never contained Patak's pastes?

What did they think would happen?


http://youtu.be/lXqLZDw7kdo

Hi all,


Once again I turn to the forum for help. I am trying to compile a full and complete list of herbs and spices with simple descriptions of taste.


I have scoured the internet for a reliable source that contains a full list but have yet to find any that are reliable or complete.


If anyone can point me to a reliable and complete source, I would be very grateful indeed.


Thanks in advance,


Malc.

During the week I had ordered a few take away's and had some left overs which I had kept to do a little experiment with. Whilst I did have some main and side dishes left, these were consigned to a foil tray and frozen for another day. But the fridge received several small polystyrene pots of mint sauce, 1 mango chutney and crucially, 1 pot of coconut chutney.

Now the coconut chutney is the thick dry red masala paste that is used by the Shanaz to make the Tikka Masala gravy. A spoon of this stuff on a popadum does wonders after a few pints, give it a try

Anyway, best laid plans were thwarted when we decided in last minute fashion to have chicken kebabs. So rather than resort to my normal shish recipe, I thought i'd try a go at using the left over chutneys. With this I mixed equal amounts of the mint sauce and the coconut chutney and tasted it, it wasn't too bad missed that curry tone. So I opted to then add an equal amount of the IG spice mix, bingo!

So I then set about mixing up enough to marinade 3 fat chicken breasts that had been cut into tikka sized pieces. I added just a little Mustard Oil and small squeeze of lemon and mixed everything together and let the chicken marinade. 

Oven was set to 250c and the now skewered chicken was cooked in the oven for 20 mins.

Result, wow what a fantastic conclusion to the test. The flavour of the tikka was pretty close to the mark and so to was the colour. I shall certainly be doing it again if I have left over chutneys. I urge those that can, to give it a go, at least just to see the results for yourselves. If you cant get the thick masala paste from your local, check out the following topic http://cr0.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=7860.0

Cheers,
Malc

As requested by Bob, this is a recipe I put together last night for a Pork Stroganoff. Was very happy with it and will definitely be putting in on the rotation of regular dishes we do. Next time I am going to try adding in some diced apple as I felt it would sit well. You could also replace the sweet paprika and chilli with equal quantities of hot paprika. If you can't get hold of the Knorr Stock Pot, just use a good quality stock cube.

As usual, any feed back is more than welcome.

INGREDIENTS
Serves 2-3
450g Pork fillet, sliced 1cm thick
250g Chestnut mushrooms, sliced
2 Small onions, chopped
2 Cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbls Plain flour
Salt & pepper
2 tsp Sweet paprika
1 tsp Smoked paprika
0.5 tsp Chilli
350ml (Approx ) Scrumpy Cider
0.5 Knorr Chicken Stock Pot
60ml Double cream
3 Tbls Olive oil
25g Butter


METHOD
Preheat oven to 180

Getting back into currying again, i've been thinking on trying new things. Over the past months i've been trying to make my food look and taste better but always seem to struggle with presentation. I think in the main, this is because my portion sizes are far to big to allow for delicate plating. :

Anyway, I put this dish together yesterday which was: Poached Chicken breast with Bengali spiced potatoes and a Hyderabadi style curry.

I was quite pleased with it but felt I had plenty of room to improve it. Not sure what you guys will make of the pic, but all comments (good and bad) are welcome.

Cheers,

Malc.

Some of you may remember the debate we had a couple of years ago on the physical measurement of a spoon versus measuring spoons.  It went to some length but we all agreed that for the sake of the recipes on here, we would all use the now standard measurement, that is found on a normal measuring spoon this being:

1 tsp  = 5ml
1 dsp = 10ml
1 tbls = 15ml

Despite this I still continued to employ my usual method which was to use a rounded measure of a regular teaspoon or tablespoon. A little while back though, my wife picked up some plastic measuring spoons from a supermarket and I have started using them instead, for convenience. It wasn't until yesterday however, that I noticed what the spoons had written on them as metric volumes, which baffled me:

1 tsp     = 4ml
1/2 tbls = 7ml
1 tbls    = 15ml

Not having a dessert spoon measure is not the end of the world but I cant measure that with 2 teaspoons as that would only be 8ml!

Those that followed the original topic may chuckle at this. 

This question came about after a conversation I had with Ali, the owner of the Shinaz in Lewes. All of the curry dishes they serve are runny (accepting that some dishes are meant to be this way) however,  I asked to have a Dopiaza made dryer. He had absolutely no trouble with my request and infact commented that he too, prefers a dryer Dopiaza. Of course it begged the question then, why does he serve a runnier curry to his customers? He replied "this is how my customers expect and prefer them, who am I to argue".

In contrast, the Indian Garden in Burgess Hill that serves some of the best curries I have ever tasted, would serve a much dryer curry in respect of say a Karahi (Korai on their menu) or Dopiaza for example. There are other differences between theses two restaurants in that the Runnier Shinaz curries often have alot of smaller chopped onion and green peppers with plenty of base, whereas the dryer Indian Garden dishes would have large chunks of onion and green pepper with much less base.

So ignoring the curries that are meant to be runnier like the Madras and Masala etc. How do you prefer your curries in general?

Cheers,

Malc.

Hi all,


I've been tasked with making a traditional German dinner using Kn