Hi guys

This was last night's supper, along with chappatis and an experimental sag bhaji.

It was also my second go at the jhal frezi. The first time it was great, but a couple of issues came up with the ingredients and, of course, with it being my first crack at a curry other than madras or vindaloo (not counting a rather sad korma I once attempted for a chilli-intolerant friend a couple of years back - but we won't go into that :-X).

First time around, I think I overcooked the pre-cooked vegetables. They ended up a bit soggy in the final dish, and made it taste a little watery. When it came to the pastes, Tesco were doing a special offer on a big bag of green chillies, so I bought them to make up the minced chilli and coriander paste. They were very mild, as it turned out, and the paste didn't have much kick to it at all. I also don't have any mustard oil, which probably didn't help.

With the red masala, I didn't have any cochineal. I tried to guestimate an amount of powder but once again, I think I overdid it. the dish ended up phall-red in colour, and this was probably contributed to by the colour bleed of the chicken tikka I used.

Also, having been frozen and then reheated, Chewy's base has gone from golden to a toffee-brown colour, which contributed to the final dish being quite dark. I'm not sure what to do about that. I did add plenty of water during the second simmer phase when I was making it. The taste isn't affected at all.

The finger chillies I bought for the dish were very small too, although nice and hot. Two got a bit lost in the dish.

So second time around, I added two teaspoons of the minced chilli and a little chilli powder to make up for the lack of kick of the Tesco chillies. As I already had the taste and colour from the chicken tikka meat, I added only 1 teaspoon of the red masala paste to balance it. I also used five of the little finger chillies.

It's still Chewy's recipe. I just adjusted the amounts to make up for inferior ingredients, I hope. It was lovely.

The experimental sag bhaji is Julian's C2G sag aloo without the aloo, basically. I added some sliced garlic and more spinach, and used the cherry tomatoes I bought to do Chewy's jhal frezi with. Next time I need to fry the sliced garlic for a little longer. I think I'll add some mix powder too, and back off on the lemon juice a little. But it was quite close to what I'm looking for and well worth a punt.

Chewy's recipe including green minced chilli paste and red masala mix here:
https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=5699.0

And my pics (I'm working on the presentation ;D)

Hi guys

My Holy Trinity when it comes to ordering curries is Chicken Tikka Vindaloo, Mushroom Pilau and Saag Bhaji. The first time I tasted Saag Bhaji, it was almost enough to convert me to vegetarianism.

I've had some pretty 'meh' versions of it over the years. At its worst it's just tasted like spinach fried in oil with garlic and onions. That, I can recreate. But recently, I had a takeaway and the Saag Bhaji tasted just like it did when I first discovered it in the 80's. We talk about the 'toffee taste' but this was extreme. It was rich and spicy and just gorgeous.

Which is odd, because the main curry which came with the delivery was absolute pants!

I've scoured the site and although there's a recipe for Saag Aloo here (enough to feed a battalion) I wondered if anyone could give me a recipe, or even just hints and tips, for a single-serving plain Saag Bhaji?

Thanks in advance

Ian
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Hi guys

I've tried many tikka marinades over the years. This is the one I keep coming back to, time and time again. I know that it's all about personal preference and trying to recreate the taste of your own favourite takeaway and so on, but this just does it for me. It's buried right at the bottom of the tikka recipe board, and was posted by Pete back in 2005 when I first joined. I still have the original print-out that I ran off in my 'curry folder'.

It's easy to overlook some of the recipes that were posted here way back when, especially as there's so much info on the site now. This didn't get much of a take-up when it was first posted, and I haven't seen anything since (correct me if I've missed something).

Here's the link: https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=352.0

I'd be interested to find out if anyone's tried it and hasn't posted, or if anyone fancies trying it now and reporting back. If you make tikka/tandoori, you'll have everything you need for it in your cupboards already.

I halve the ingredients and use five or six chicken breasts. I use half a pot of 500g Tesco 'Smart Price' natural low fat yoghurt. The rest of the pot freezes with no problem to use the next time (in a marinade, that is - I wouldn't want to eat it with a spoon!).

The recipe states an 8 hour marinade, which is fine, but I get the best results by giving it 48 hours. I either grill the chicken on skewers or bake it on the highest heat in my oven for 10 mins or so, finishing it off with a blowtorch to dry the surface and char it a bit.

Cheers
Ian
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That's what The Fabulous Baker Brothers told me on Channel 4 this evening, so it must be true. I didn't see the whole programme, but I was channel surfing and caught sight of a a couple of guys in a BIR kitchen so I naturally paused with interest.

"You can't cook restaurant curries at home, and here's why", one of them said.

1: You don't have a Tandoor at home. No, really, you don't. Indian restaurants use a Tandoor. And you don't have one. Apparently.
2: The dishes are cooked in a special blend of spices.
3: Each dish is cooked in a special sauce.

Phew! That's a relief. If only the Fabulous Baker Brothers had been around back in 2005 when I joined this site. They could have saved me an awful lot of time and effort.

However, all is not lost. Apparently you can make a nice curry if you use something called 'Garam Masala', and add your own choice of spices as you see fit. And coriander. Plus, I know someone who can give you a good price per kilo for your aluminium curry pans, so it's not all bad.

They then went on to cook a fish curry, but I switched over because I didn't want to miss the start of Celebrity Big Brother - not now that I know I can't cook restaurant curries at home.

The programme isn't yet available on 4OD as I type, but when it is, it'll be here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-fabulous-baker-brothers/episode-guide/series-1/episode-2

Call me optimistic, but I think I'll wait until I see the whole prog before I bin the contents of my spice cupboard. They might have a recipe for Spicy Baked Loaf, or something.

;D

Hi everyone.  Sorry, long time no post.

Right - I've been at this home-curry making business for about six years now, and a definite pattern is starting to emerge.  Here's what generally happens:

1.  I find a recipe.

2.  I follow the recipe to the absolute letter, using medicinal measuring spoons for the spices and a stopwatch for the timing.

3.  I eat the finished curry.

4. I sit and re-read the recipe for about two hours, scrutinising every line in dismay, trying to work out where I could possibly have gone wrong ...

Then:

5. Full of optimism, I decide to try to adapt an existing recipe -  leaving some ingredients out, adding others, changing cooking times and so on.

6. I eat the curry.

7. I go to bed but am unable to sleep, kept awake as I am by the ghosts of BIR chefs chuckling and blowing raspberries in my ear.

:

Actually it's not all that bad - though sometimes it feels as if it is.  The latest casualty of my technique (or lack of it) seems to be the Bruce Edwards recipes.  The first time I tried them, the curries seemed to be (to my palette) over-flavoured.  The base sauce does seem very rich, made up as is.  But like everyone else, I'm aware we're probably all chasing different things, based on our local favourite takeaways.  Perhaps some curry houses do serve food as rich and powerfully flavoured as the Bruce Edwards recipes.

On the other hand it's entirely possible that I just can't cook. :-[

Anyway, I've made a couple of batches of the base sauce since then, and halved the amount of some ingredients like carrot and peppers.  I've added a bit more water in the initial stage as well.  My other half now thinks the resulting curries are the best I've made, which is some relief (I think!).

I'm adding a pint of oil at the beginning too, and ladling it off for cooking the individual dishes afterwards.  But a problem I'm having is getting the oil in the finished dishes to separate.  If I use a KD-based curry gravy, I can put five tablespoons of oil in a pan for the finished dish and at the end, more or less spoon four tablespoons off before serving.  But my tweaked BE gravy seems to hold on to the oil - I'm lucky to even get a teaspoon off at the end.

Has anyone else had this problem?  I'd like to avoid it as it makes the curry taste 'over-emulsified', and will do my ever-expanding waistline no favours at all.

I've tried simmering for longer (meat ends up as tough as old boots), adding the base half a ladle at a time and evaporating off between (works initially, then gives up after the third ladle) and boiling the curry for five minutes initially as per KD (sauce ends up the consistency of Polyfilla).

I've just bought a new hand blender, and it's very good - perhaps it's too good, and I'm pureeing the base too finely?  Not enough water left in the onion particles or something?

Any ideas gratefully received.

Hi, all.

I'm having a curry cook-up this weekend to coincide with a barby on Sunday (so I can try out some smoky onions in the mix).  As I was buying some ingedients this morning, a thought occurred to me:

Are you guys still roasting and grinding your own spices, or do you use factory-ground?  I gave up roasting about two years ago (apart from home-mixed garam masala), but still grind at home.  Partly because (I'm told) whole spices keep for much longer, so it makes economic sense to me.  But I can't get the spices anywhere near as fine as factory ground in my little coffee-grinder.

Plus, it hadn't occured to me to use factory ground curry powders - Rajah mild madras, for example - until I joined this site, and people said they'd been told by BIR chefs that they use them themselves.

Those of you fortunate enough to have been in BIR kitchens and talked with chefs - did you see any evidence of factory ground (i.e. packaged and labelled) spices like cumin and coriander knocking about?

The guy in the market who I buy spices from said that his supplier also supplies his local takeaway.  I've forgotten exactly what the company's called but it's something like T.R.S. - sound familiar to anyone?

Hi everyone.  'Infrequent Ian' here.

There's been some talk in threads about the KD recipes.  Some of it's geting a bit heated (pardon the pun!) and I'd like to leave that behind, in this post.  But as there seems to be a division between those who think the KD approach basically works and those who don't, I thought I'd just add my thoughts on its pros and cons, and let you know how I've been tweaking it over the years. I'm not sticking up for it in any way - it's still not close enough.

First of all - and this has been mentioned before - although we all try to describe 'The Taste' and we seem to be able to agree on certain aspects of it, it's massively subjective.  It's entirely possible that some of you would try a vindaloo from my favourite local takeaway, and decide that it just doesn't 'do it' for you.  When I visit my friends in Southend, they order from a very posh and expensive takeaway which obviously uses the very best ingredients but for me, the meal just doesn't hang together (in terms of taste) in the way that I prefer.  My local favourite is positively cheap by comparison, but it's their food's taste and texture that I'm trying to replicate.  So I may be chasing something different from you altogether!

My finished KD curry has a very similar texture to my local's.  It tastes fairly light and 'clean'.  When I tried Pete's excellent Brick Lane recipe, both I and my partner agreed that - while it tasted great - the sauce seemed to have an emulsified oil texture in the mouth.  This is probably because I pureed the  base without removing the floating oil first.  It wasn't unpleasant, but for our palettes it was a little over-rich.  So for me, the KD method of pureeing boiled onions before adding oil seems to get me closer to my goal.

I agree that the KD book falls down in the individual dish recipes, and that the base sauce in itself is bland.  What the dish cooking method has going for it - in my opinion -
is that the rather watery base sauce evaporates down during the 5 minute boil, and then the oil separates and floats during the 4 or so minutes of simmering.  To me, this just looks and feels right and deems to make sense.  But the dish recipes all seem overspiced and oversalted, and the addition of so much Garam Masala turns the sauce a muddy brown.  My local's is always golden (apart from the Phall!) so this tells me I'm going off the rails.  Then again, some people here have reported seeing brown base sauces in BIR kitchens...

Here's how I've got my  best results for a vindaloo to date.  I'm not suggesting that if you try it, you'll like it!  But just for info (and to prove that I do actually do some cooking!):

Base sauce:  I use twice as much garlic as the recipe  says and one-and-a-half times as much ginger.  I roughly chop and fry the garlic (just golden, not brown) before adding it to the ginger and water and pureeing.  This seems to blend in better (in terms of taste) and also - I don't know if this is important - seems to stop the onion mixture going that insipid green colour.  Then straight on as the book says - although most recently, I added  2" of coconut block and a green pepper when boiling the onions (inspired by Pete's recipe) and it was very nice.

On to the tomato, paprika and oil stage, and instead of using  225g tinned tomatoes and their juice,  I drain the tinned tomatoes thoroughly and puree enough to get 225g after emptying the blender.  I've also tried doubling the amount and that worked well.  Then straight on as the book says.

When it comes to the dish, I use 3/4 pint of base for one portion.  How on earth are you supposed to get 3 to 4 portions out of that as the book says?!  When I've finished, the base has reduced to just over 1/2 a pint.

I bring to the boil and add cooked meat and chilli powder - but I add 1/4 to 1/2 a teaspoon of asafoetida too.  1/4 of a teaspoon of salt is enough for me - a whole teaspoon seems practically poisonous.  I boil this furiously for five minutes - but with a lid on.  I know BIRs don't use a lid, but this is mainly to save my kitchen from splatters!

Then I lower the heat ad add just 1/2 level teaspoon of the KD Garam Masala, and the tip of a teaspoon's worth of ground fenugreek leaves.  And instead of adding half the chopped coriander after two minutes and simmering for a further two, I just sprinkle the coriander immediately before serving.  Any sooner and it seems to discolour the dish and lose all its magic.

Now, to my palette, if I could just get the smoky toffee taste/smell into this, I think I'll have pretty much cracked it.  Which is why I've got to try the chicken jelly next time.  I agree with Pete that chicken curries will have this quality to a degree, but it's not as pronounced in mine as it is in my local takeaway's.  I think if it iis the missing factor, they must add it even if the curry is going to contain chicken anyway.

Plus there's lots of other things to try from the excellent info provided on this site, not to mention comlete alternatives to KD - all of which I intend to get round to, when I can afford it!