Made this up tonight for dinner using left over Taz base - as per C.A's CTM which I had the other night, the results were excellent.  Not really a Korma fan but really enjoyed this one a definite 10 out of 10.

The girlfriend preferred it to mine too!

made up some Taz base yesterday - has anyone else noticed it actually smells really nice while cooking?  Must be the cumin/coriander but it overpowered the usual onion smell. 

Might not get the usual comments from the girlfriend about the kitchen smelling 

made this last night with Taz base and spice mix - was excellent! To make it healthier I swapped the cream for yoghurt - which worked really well.  Will certainly be making this one again!

Quote from: chewytikka on February 01, 2011, 01:26 AM
Tomdip
Looks excellent!
A nice clean, fresh and light sauce, on what looks like a bed of Jeera rice.
I'd be happy to sit down to that dish any day, as it looks very much like my own cooking
except it's a couple of shades lighter in colour, which will be down to the passata, instead of puree.
Did you use Kashmiri Chilli Powder?
I love the stuff, adds great flavour and colour to the dish.

Chewy,

Thanks for kind words - I loved the PDF & recipe - really clear and made me want to cook it straight away.   I thought that Deggi and Kashmiri Mirch were one and the same - I now know differently!  ;D  Next time I will follow recipe properly with the spice mix and puree. 

The rice has cumin and black onion - not traditional maybe but I just love their flavour.

FAO: Solarsplace - your pic and curries look absolutley spot on!

Made this tonight - had a curry-window of opportunity with the missus out for the evening.  Followed recipe as close as possible - except used Rajah Hot Madras instead of spice mix, and passata instead of puree.

Results - oooooowwww too hot for me!!!

My wimpy palate found it hard to pick out the subtler flavours over the chilli - however I manfully perservered and cleaned my plate (2 pints of milk helped!).

All in all very nice - though I will half the chilli next time and see if I can pick up the lemon & worcestershostocestoshire sauce

Phil I much prefer Lamb too - but the costs are considerably more when cooking in bulk. Try Gezh's recipe (with a tbsp of soy and ketchup) in for a smaller size.

My pub is in Peterborough - but the curry nights are only every couple of months  http://www.individualpubs.co.uk/coalheavers/

had the last pot of leftovers today

The Garam Masala wasn't overpowering at all - This may have been for a couple of reasons - it went in early on in the cooking and become a background flavour - especially as the curry was reheated the following day.

One problem I find in bulk curries is getting the spicing right and I will often add a concentrated spice mix until I am happy with the flavour.

The dansak came out pretty spot on - and I have been eating dansak as my curry of choice in takeaways/restaurants for 10 years or so.  I would only have added a bit more lemon juice on serving and more chilli!

The Korma is a much maligned curry and like many of us I need at least a hint of chilli or I feel cheated.  However my missus is violently allergic to chillies/pepper and we all have curry virgin friends that we like to cook for and I personally dislike over-sweet/coconut curries.

This is my version of a 1 person korma based on KDs - I cooked this loads commercially in a pub in London and it was a firm favourite.  I would say it is better than any I have had in a restaurant (tasting other peoples you understand!)  but that depends on whether you love the sweet/coconut thing.

This only serves one - but it is easy to multiply up - I have made it for 40 in the past for a beer festival.

2 tbsp oil
1 ladle/200ml base sauce (I used KDs)
Pinch Salt
Drop yellow food colouring or pinch of turmeric
quarter tsp Garam Masala - rajahs is good
half tsp Cumin powder
2 tbsp Single Cream
Chopped coriander leaf

Heat the oil, and add the curry sauce.
When simmering add the garam masala and cumin - this always amazes me how such a tiny amount of spice made such a magic smell!
Add 1 breast/7 chunks of pre-cooked chicken breast (just boiled) and the yellow colour or turmeric.
When the chicken is hot and the oil seperates add the cream - this is where the yellow colour appears
Serve topped with chopped coriander leaf.

I like to add a pinch of chopped coriander while cooking - something about the green flecks in the curry sauce that looks really appealing.

I draw the ladle accross the bottom of the pan and if the divided sauce ran back together quickly - I cooked a bit longer.  This is just a way of seeing if your sauce is the right consistency.

If you cook at a high temp - this used to only take 7-8 mins from start to serve.

I have used this curry several times for people who say "they hate curries" and it has gone down very well, and for young nieces who said it was yummy and cleaned their plates

thanks for the compliments chaps - I am sort of used to doing uber-portions of curry.  Used to run a curry-friday in my old pub where I had 4 woks on the go and offered all the curry house standards. Only got a normal flat kitchen here so it is difficult to be as ambitious as I used to be.   I am not a chef though - just a curry lover like all on here.

I had never managed to crack the "dansak flavour" till I tried Gezh's method here - so its thanks to him I made this recipe up.

Would say the Dansak was the most time consuming to do - as I wasn't too happy with the flavour and did some fixes (adding some more of the sweet/sour mix) as it was re-heating.

I have done quite a few curry events here - making 40 portion servings of Rogan, Korma, Achar, my variation of CTM, and a Methi (which wasn't too great).  so Phil - I will repeat the exercise - though will do a different recipe next time - the customers are always asking when the next curry night is.

Sold 40 portions at ?5 a pop -  not too big a markup though the beer sales are up a lot and it makes for a good night in the pub.

While I love making individual curry portions from a base sauce - doing curry nights in my pub mean I have had to make up larger amounts on occasion. 

In the past I made big 1 pot all-in curries from various traditional curry recipes but found they were lacking in the BIR flavour that I was trying to achieve. 

I then started making big pots of curries from 1 batch of KD base and multiplying my curry ingredients by 5-7 (except salt and chilli) and got some great results. 

However making even larger curries involved a lot of guess work on the spicing and this method increased the number of cooking stages - 1 make base 2. pre-cook meat  3. Make up curry.

The beauty of big batch cooking is it is quite hard to really cock it up - and reasonably easy to rectify any problems (in comparison with individual curries anyway).  There is a lot more lee-way either side with spicing, heat, saltiness etc.

So not sure you can qualify this as a BIR dhansak - though my intention was to make it as close to that as possible. 

Recipe
Started by making 2 x Bruce Edwards base, which was quite brave as I have only used KDs in the past. 

I did some multiplications of my slightly tweaked Gezh's Dhansak recipe and worked out I needed the following:

1 litre oil
2 x Bruce Edwards Base
1 kg yellow split lentils + 500g red lentils made into a basic dall
3 tsp salt
8 kg pre cooked chicken breast (just boiled)
30 tbsps Garlic/Ginger puree
300 ml tomato passata

spice mix
30 tsp Madras curry powder
20 tsp Garam Masala
9 Tbsp Kasoori Methi
12 tsp amchoor

sweet/sour mix
250 ml sugar
200 ml mango chutney
250 ml lemon juice

smokey/dark mix
20 tbsp Ketchup
20 tbsp soya sauce

Chopped coriander 1.5 bunches

The method:

I made the base the day before, and the dall which was a simple water, turmeric, lentils simmered for an hour till I got the consistency I wanted.

I then heated 3/4 of oil and fried the garlic/ginger puree for a min or 2

Then added the spice mix and stirred for another min.

I then added all the base and the cooked dall - and heated for a while to get up to temperature

At this point I added half the sweet/sour and smokey/dark mix and tasted till I got the flavour balance right in my opinion (I then whacked the lot in!)

I then poured the curry over the chicken - and chilled ready for the following day.

To reheat I heated to oil and slowly bought to a simmer - stirring regularly as the lentils tended to sink to the bottom and stick to the pan.

The curry turned out really well - needed a touch more chilli - but cooking for lots of people with various chilli tolerances means you have to keep it reasonably mild.  Sold 40 portions and still had some left over to give little pots away for seconds!

Some naff mobile phone pics attached:

cooking the base and the dall


Lots of pureed base


Cooking the curry in 2 saucepans


Curry ready for re-heating - more smokey mix making it look darker


Lots of poppadoms


Serving on the night


Was too busy afterwards to take any pics - but it looked great on the plate - and we had lots of happy customers!

I had also made up a pot of veggie curry, a rice cooker full of pilau rice, a naga-chilli sauce to spice up the curry and about 60 poppadoms!