Back to the topic...

My Chicken Saag was great, just like the real thing. Perfect when you want something milder with good flavour.

I had a big bag of spinach, and pureed around 200g, then chucked in 50g of fresh leaves as the recipe suggests. Very good with chicken tikka.

I'm with Axe on this.

This site gives you everything you need to make curries quickly and cheaply, and in good quantity. Whenever you make a preparation ingredient (G+G, rice, base etc) you always make some extra. Then making the final curry is extremely quick and costs next to nothing. There's just no point in these, what we can do at home is better.


Having said that, I was rather partial to Iceland Beef Madras, just ?1.50 

It's funny as I would include 'Saag' as one of the standard BIR dishes, up there with madras, bhuna, etc. You can guarantee that if I go out with either my or my partners family, at least one person will order a Saag. It's common to have a few bits of fresh green chilli, and slithers of garlic, floating around in it.

Judging by the small amount of saag recipes here, I guess that's not the case for most of you.

I'm going to try this tomorrow too, it's one I've been looking out for... and I've just got hold of some fresh spinach from the allotment!

Yeah I know, I should be using pureed spinach from a can... but hey!


Edit... won't be using any asafoetida though... have no idea what it is or where to get it!

Ouch... great article!

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Anandita Dutta Tamuly ate 60 of the peppers in just two minutes before a cheering crowd including the British chef, Gordon Ramsay, who was filming a television series. For unexplained reasons, having consumed the chillies, the young woman then rubbed 20 of them into her eyes. She emerged, seemingly unscathed, saying: "I am very happy to have broken my own record."

Jerry, and all.

This is something I'm quite conscious of myself. One of the reasons I'm enjoying cooking curry is that I'm making things to my tastes. The curry isn't floating in oil, and isn't over salted. The last time I ordered a take away, I was horrified in the quantity of oil it had, and spent ages spooning it off. In fact since I started using this site around xmas time, I haven't had a take away since. I'm scared of what my opinions will be when I do!

Rule 1 for me is less oil and hardly any salt, with the other flavours in the curry you just don't need it. It's like giving up sugar in coffee, once you're used to it, it's better.

And Jerry, I would say it's the rest of your diet that's the problem. Cut out the pizzas, fry ups etc. Pizzas are the worst food anyone can eat, as far as health is concerned. Currys aren't great in themselves, so I make sure the rest of my food intake is cereals with fruit, nuts and yoghurt in the morning, and lots of fresh stuff (vegetables from the allotment!) as much as I can. By the time you get to the curry, it's all the more worthwhile!

Quote from: CurryOnRegardless on April 29, 2010, 06:13 PM

Quote from: Gezh on April 29, 2010, 04:51 PM


I bought a packet of East End red split lentils, and I can say that they definitely hold their shape better than the Tesco ones. They didn't get so mushy so quickly, and my dhal has a nice bite to it. And I still got them from Tesco :-)

Split red lentils are supposed to go mushy, if they haven't broken down then they aren't cooked properly, which may lead to 'resonance' problems the day after eating them!


Regards
CoR

Yes - they still go mushy, and are cooked properly, but they just seemed to retain their shape better, so that you really know there's lentils in the dish. The other ones I had really did just turn to mush, so for all you knew it could have been anything in there.

When you get served a good dhal, you can always see the lentils floating around in it.

Thanks for the comments.

I'm sure I had read somewhere about some differences, which is why I asked. Having experimented, there does seem to be a small difference.

I bought a packet of East End red split lentils, and I can say that they definitely hold their shape better than the Tesco ones. They didn't get so mushy so quickly, and my dhal has a nice bite to it. And I still got them from Tesco :-)

Yep, that was great, probably the most BIR-TA-like pathia I've had so far. I think the spice mix made a difference, a change from the usual one I use, and it definitely didn't need the tamarind. Also worth adding chicken tikka for some extra flavour.

Spot on, thanks!

Quote from: Razor on April 26, 2010, 10:28 PM
Hi Gezh,

QuoteI always just use whatever I have on hand, which at this moment is CA's.

That's no bad thing, I use CA's base as standard these days but, the kushi base does have a lot of whole spices in there and you can taste them when tasting the base alone! 

CA's base, to me, is very much BIR whereby the Kushi base is 'Balti' which to me are totally different.

I don't know if you have ever read any of my other post's whereby I'm a big believer of a base and a spice blend from the same source, complimenting each other?  well I think that, for this recipe, this is very much the case!

With that said, give it a go, you may love it or hate it, but at least you'd have made the effort.

Ray

Well I don't think there's going to be much to hate... it'll be a case of is it great or brilliant :-)