Sorry to advertise here but just thought somebody might be interested in a little used pro-blender. Missus bought it me for my 50th birthday but I only used it 3 times.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/111336992320?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Paul.

Ho hum it's me again and my sous vide experiments.   

Last night was chicken tikka. I used about 500 grams of chicken breasts (3 in total).
I copped out again and used Mr Huda for the tikka paste but next time I'll make up my own blade style mix.

First picture - the frozen chicken and marinade just been sealed:



Second picture close up of my Sous Vide Magic. Unfortunately the flash makes the numbers hard to read.
The top number is the actual temp, 57.2 degrees and the bottom number is the set temperature which was 61.0.



The temp dropped when I put the frozen chicken in the water bath but within about 20 minutes it was rock steady at 61.0 degrees. I cooked it like this for 3 hours to ensure the heat would penetrate right through.

Here is a close up of the chicken in the water bath:




The next picture show the chicken on skewers before going into a conventional oven:



The oven was about 200 degrees and the chicken was in for about 10 minutes.

Final picture on plate:



Verdict:

This was very nice and tender. I only used the Mr Huda paste as I've read all this stuff about garlic tasting weird after low temp cooking in a bag. Next time I'll use a "proper" marinade.
I must admit since I last bought Mr Huda the tikka marinade used to contain more food colouring.
My 6 year old son is presently enjoying the third of chicken we saved for him.

Cheers,

Paul

Yesterday I had quite a marathon in the kitchen. I cooked some lamb tikka sous vide and made the Chewy Tikka 3 hour base (for the second time) then I made a curry.

First photo lamb in marinade in plastic bag. Note the jar of Mr Huda tikka paste. I wasn't sure how this would turn out so used the instant stuff rather than a blade type marinade.



Second photo shows the basic sous vide setup: A cheap rice cooker controlled by the Sous Vide Magic temp controller. Ignore the white elephant Panasonic bread maker!



The third photo shows the bag vacuum sealed. I put the bag into the freezer to make sure the marinade was frozen to stop it getting sucked into the vacuum sealer. I was a bit impatient and you can see how some marinade has worked it's way up the bag before it finally sealed. That was close!



The next photo show the chewy base on the go in my 17 litre stockpot:



The next photo shows a close up of the lamb in the water bath (rice cooker). You can see the temperature probe in the water.



Next is the base sauce ready to blend. You can see my huge blender and small dog:



I ended up with about 6.5 litres of base sauce:



The next photo shows the lamb taken out of the water bath before going into a conventional oven:



And the next photo shows the lamb after 15 mins in a hot oven:



I finally got to cook my curry:



The lamb tikka turned out quite well. Unfortunately all Tesco had was packs of pre-chopped lamb like I normally avoid. It was certainly tender and the tikka effect worked well but as is often the case with sous vide the meat was a little dry.

The base sauce tasted good. I made the mix powder according to chewy's spec and used the rajah madras gold curry powder that thomas.? kindly sent me and the garam masala that ifindforu sent me.

The curry was pretty good but I used 1 tablespoon of spice mix and will cut back next time.
It's good to be cooking curries again, I took a break of about 5 weeks.

Cheers,

Paul

Sous Vide has really got my attention recently. If you haven't heard of sous vide it is a cooking technique using a low temperature water oven that has a very precise temperature control. The food to be cooked (usually meat or fish) is bagged first in a vacuum sealed plastic bag and then the bag is placed in the water oven. The cooking temperatures are low in the 55 to 85 degrees C range and the cooking times can be long, upto 78 hours in some cases!

Now so far this doesn't sound very exciting or impressive but here are the advantages:

It's impossible to burn the food so you can cook a steak exactly as you like it then take out of the plastic cooking bag and sear the outside.

No loss of juices or flavour.

Tougher cuts of meat become super tender given time and the right temperature. The temps used in sous vide are hot enough to break down the tough collagen connective tissues but not hot enough to destroy the meat muscle proteins.

The food cooked in the sealed plastic bags can be chilled after sous vide and safely kept in a fridge for about 5 days. Then when you need to serve up some super tender lamb chops, porks chops, steaks , ribs etc just open the bag and sear the meat. Great for a BBQ as the meat is already perfectly cooked through and just needs an outer coating.

I was thinking it might be a way to produce a tender lamb tikka, always a challenge.

Downsides?

Price of cooker - this will be ?400+.
Some people don't like the idea of cooking in a plastic bag but the temps are low and the plastic is food grade.
But if you've been eating in decent restaurants you've probably already eaten sous vide as it is very popular commercially.

If you can sort out the electronics you can convert a slow cooker or rice cooker into a sous vide oven:

http://www.howtogeek.com/93983/hack-a-crock-pot-into-a-sous-vide-cooker/

http://www.over-engineered.com/projects/sous-vide-pid-controller/

Hope somebody finds this interesting, I would like to make one myself if possible.

Paul


Edit: Link to Amazon product first available in UK for domestic use.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SousVide-Supreme-water-oven-plug/dp/B004LP8QCO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1332865854&sr=8-2

Edit 2: Link to a ready built controller to use a slow or rice cooker but it's Canadian:

http://www.amazon.ca/Sous-Vide-Controller-Magic-1500D/dp/B0053Z7GIQ

Edit 3 - Bingo! I might get one of these:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sous-Vide-Magic-Controller-FREE-WORLDWIDE-SHIPPING-/150613228801

Just checked the fridge this morning and I've left 400 ml of CAs new easy base recipe in there. This evening it will be 5 days old and has been stored covered up.

If it smells ok I'll probably eat it. What do others think?

Cheers,

Paul

When I got home from work I found the envelope posted yesterday by ifindforu. Thanks for that.  ;D

Inside a heat-sealed small package was about 2 or 3 tablespoons of the fabled powder. Enough for a couple of curries or so but not enough to make a new base and a curry.

I've been looking at it and tasting it. It is quite yellow compared to my 8 spice mix from Abdul Mohed and it smells and tastes quite nice. I don't think I'll know for sure until I've cooked with it.
I need to see what the missus will say when she gets in as I've had curry the last 2 nights but I'm up for another one tonight unless she goes ape.

Later......

Paul

Just heard on a news flash about 2 children suffering from botulism after eating some Lloyd Grossman korma sauce from a jar.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/11/13/loyd-grossman-korma-sauce-warning-over-botulism-poisoning-fears-115875-23559510/

Hope the kids are ok but another reason to make your own curries I guess.

Paul

Yesterday I took out the second half of a curry I cooked the day before from the fridge.
I've noticed this before but I find the curry sauce has become very thick and congealed, almost like a paste.

This cannot be down to any fat solidifying as the only fat in there is veg oil which should stay runny at fridge temperatures.

I was wondering if my base sauces are too thick? I normally use about 6 tennis ball sized onions for a finished 2.5 to 3.0 litre base. I don't normally use carrots, potatoes or any other veg in the base except a single pepper.

I'm sure from memory that when you leave a TA curry in the fridge is doesn't get as thick as my curries do.

My curries are tasting fine but might be an indication that something isn't quite right.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Paul

Anybody else snowed in?

We must have at least 8 inches of snow. This is the worst I can remember in Liverpool, a place that doesn't normally see much snow.

I need to get my wellies on and dig the car out!

Paul

I've started to eat more lamb curries lately finding chicken sometimes a little boring.

Last weekend I bought a 12.99 Argos value slow cooker, partly inspired by a post by 976bar on using one.

I bought some spring leg of lamb for about ?6.50 and chopped it up into bite sized pieces. Then I briefly fried the pieces with some cinnamon, cardmamom, and bay leaf.

Then I stuck the mixture in the slow cooker with just enough base sauce (Dipu's recipe) to cover and slow cooked for about 5 hours.
Then I cooked a curry sauce in my wok and added the lamb and base mixture.


The resulting cooked lamb was melt in the mouth consistency - very tender and tasty.

I've tried shorter methods of pre-cooking lamb but have never got such tenderness before.

As an aside, I also added a single Natco dried birds-eye chilli to the frying oil and this was also transferred to the slow cooker. I retrieved the chilli after cooking as it was still whole. I couldn't believe the amount of heat that this tiny dried chilli had imparted on my curry and it nearly caused a bust-up with the missus! Compared to even hot chilli powder these things really pack a punch!

Paul.

I've noticed from here and other sources that for BIR style curries the spice mix usually contains proportions (in roughly descending order) of Turmeric, Corriander, Cumin, Paprika and Curry powder.

I wonder what the origin of this spice mix is. I've searched for Bangladeshi and Bengali recipes but not found anything similar.

Last weekend I made to spec the Lamb Shank Korma from the "50 Great Curries Of India" book. This has corriander powder but no cumin and no turmeric whatsoever. It does have garam masala and mace.

My wife liked the result almost as much as my BIR efforts (much to my horror) but for me using too much mace or nutmeg can result in something tasting like toothpaste or cough medicine!

I've searched through a Madhur Jaffrey book I've had for years and once again there is nothing like our BIR spice mixes to be seen, and the use of turmeric tends to be low quantities.

I just wondered whether anybody knows what the origin of our BIR spice mix is.
I'm not complaining - it works for me but just curious.

Paul.

This might be well known to everyone but it wasn't to me.

Previously I have been using a garlic press when preparing garlic. When I went to Tenerife before Christmas I had a paella dish and noticed large pieces of garlic in the dish. Since then I have experimented with using different size pieces of garlic in my curries from crushed to coarsely sliced.

If you crush the garlic 2 things happen: First off it is much easier to burn when frying on it's own in oil. Secondly it imparts a much deeper garlic flavour to the dish you're cooking providing you don't burn it. I've just googled for "cooking garlic" and this does seem to be the case.

So if you want a strongly garlic flavoured curry the crushed garlic does the job for the flavour.

One other thing, close your eyes when pressing the garlic in a crusher. I got some garlic in my eye recently and it isn't good!

Paul.

I've often wondered about the exact cooking sequence for these BIR imitations with some recipes saying cook the garlic first and others saying onion/pepper first then garlic etc. Like others on this forum every curry is a bit of an experiment - otherwise no progress would be made.

I've now made the following changes to my cooking technique:-

If using Onions/Peppers cook them nice and slow in a separate fry pan.

Next I dump this lot into my carbon steel wok.

Then I add about 200 ml base, salt, spice mix, garlic, ginger, chili and tom paste and methi all at once.

I start heating on medium constantly stirring and reducing the base until the oil shows through and most of the water has gone from the base.

Next (cooking for 2 here) I add another 300 ml of base and raw chicken (if using) and simmer away for 10 to 12 minutes reducing the sauce a little more and doing the final seasoning.

I find that the reduction of the base in stage one with the constant stirring and scraping back in of the dried out base creates some of that smokey taste we are looking for.

Also, this method seems quite foolproof and it is hard to burn anything using this technique.

My curries have definitely improved using this method and are slightly easier to make.

Hi,

I currently cook my bases in a 4.5 or 5 litre aluminium non-stick stock pot with a glass lid.
This is fine for making a base with a finished volume of 2 to 3 litres but I'd like to double up on my base production in one go and was looking at pots twice as big.

Question is, I don't get any sticking problems with my current pot. I have seen that stainless steel pots are quite cheap whereas a 10 or 11 litre non-stick pot can cost 60 quid or more.

Do people here have any problems with stainless steel stock pots (or plain aluminium) with regards to sticking? I imagine after blending there might be more chance of sticking and burning. Or is it just not a problem and I'll buy the cheaper option.

Any advice or experience for me? - thanks.

PaulP.

Last night everything went wrong for me - combination of a bad recipe and my mistakes.

First off the bad recipe. I made the KD Beef Badami from the second curry secret book.
That was a waste of over 6 quid in quality rump steak. When I added the single cream near the end of cooking it turned the most horrible pale colour and was very unpleasant to look at yet alone taste. I won't be doing that one again!

The missus was uneasy about eating just a load of meat so I knocked together a mixed vegetable bhuna to balance things out. Big mistake here - I used mixed frozen veg and frozen peppers. In doing so I completely lost control of the texture of the veg. Next time I'll go back to using fresh veg pre-cooked properly like I normally do.

Finally, and a bit more worrying for me, I managed to burn the garlic in the veg bhuna and I'm not sure why cos I didn't think I did much different except using about 50% more fresh garlic than normal. The taste of burnt garlic is not good and pretty overpowering.

The pilau rice was ok but the cooking time is critical - I think I need a kitchen timer as it was a little overdone.

Oh well lessons learnt.