There's an Australian steak house chain called "Hogs Breath Cafe" that do this, they cook an entire rib fillet for 18 hours then cut it into thick steaks and sear. Bloody delicious. They are expanding to the UK apparently so watch out for one near you  ;D

http://www.hogsbreath.com.au/main-menu/our-menu/prime-rib-steak

They are related more to the leek, and are apparently a variety of elephant garlic, not a true garlic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solo_garlicI've seen them in the supermarket a few times - might give them a try here.

In Brisbane there's a small cafe style joint up an arcade run by the major Brisbane Indian Grocers and it cooks nothing like BIR or AIR, it specialises in Dosa and Puri the size of a football, but also does a "Thali" meal with three curries and rice - it's vegetarian but does heavenly stuff like paneer and peas, chickpeas and a sort of veg biryani, and once a week puts on a sweet and sour curry based on soy lumps "Soy Wadi". Many diners have complained that it's chicken  ;D  - when I first went there I could have sworn it was chicken as well.

I did a stab at it today, and quite happy with the results.
Served some as a snack to a mate and he asked "what's the sausage?"



You just steep 100g of the chunks in lukewarm water for an hour and they plump up. Then I did:

2 tblsp oil plus a little mustard oil

Cassia stick, 5 cloves, 3 black cardmoms, a star anise, fried until spices darken / swell

2 finely chopped onions cooked in the spiced oil until darkened and caramelised

good pinch of dried methi leaves

2 tblsp garlic ginger paste fried in for a few minutes

good pinch of hing and half tblsp cumin seeds fried in for a minute

350 ml passata tomato puree
tblsp dry mix power and half a tblsp turmeric, half tblsp sweet paprika, tblsp ground kashmiri chilli powder.

tblsp moist brown sugar

half cup of water, bring to boil and simmer for a few minutes

with the swollen Soy Wadi, squeeze them like little bathroom sponges and drop into the brew so they can absorb the flavours.

Cook one hour.

Squeeze juice of a whole lime in before serving.

Very nice, almost like they do it at the restaurant. 

Aha thanks for that, I was on a site that said "cook for three toots" so that explains it.

Australian rhyming slang is derived from Cockney due to migrants from Britain (many were compulsory migrants  ;D)
and some of the variations are different to London. For example "bag" = suit (bag o' fruit) - it's still used amongst older generations, just half an hour ago I was having a home brewed beer or five with my old age pensioner neighbour from the next street and he said "Well I'd better make this the one for the frog" (frog n toad, road).

Some older people still use terms that are straight out of Dickens for example "cove" = bloke.

And it's still common to refer to Wellies as Blucher Boots, theory being that many early migrants may have actually been at the Battle of Waterloo and that General Blucher invented said boots, not Wellington who took credit for it. If you say Wellingtons or Wellies to most Aussies they don't know what you mean.

Love history 

I've been looking at some sites and blogs for traditional Indian veg curry recipes, we have a trad restaurant in Brisbane that serves a variety of non BIR style curries. They are absolutely delicious and seem to be "Vedic" style with the use of hing instead of onions and garlic,  but I have no idea how they create them - they can take potatoes and peas and have you in ecstasy after a fork full.

The thing that infuriates me is that the Indian sites, when discussing pressure cooking, often say "pressure cook for a couple of toots" or "pressure cook for three whistles". WTF do they mean by this? 

I know a whistle and toot is something a Cockney wears when he takes the Trouble down to the Rubbidy,  ;D but before I go in the comments sections on their blogs and start abusing them, I wondered if anyone here had an explanation, is it some feature of Indian pressure cookers?

Weather Forecast for Tuesday: London 22 / 13 .......... Brisbane 23 / 12
And we are whingeing about the cold at the moment  ;D

Mind it did get down to around 6 this morning with a blast of Antarctic Air, which was a bit rude considering we've been having 26 degree Indian Summer for the last few weeks.

Anyway good home brewed stout weather 

I haven't done a "cook off" between the two styles yet but I've got a shedload of precooked lamb and stock (bought a leg and boned it out and cubed it). I might just freeze a portion of that gravy, run up a mini-BIR-gravy from Julian's ebook and do two parallel serves of madras using the same precooked meat and do the taste test. 

I also have a stack of dry mix powder as well that I made up a couple of weeks ago. The oils are identical as well as the garlic ginger paste so it should be an interesting taste off between the cooking styles.

On the subject of A.I.R. I volunteered to do the snacks for my home brew club meeting on Tuesday (20-30 attendees) so I'm bringing along a Chicken Madras and have made the base gravy today. The chicken has been precooked, much in the same way as Curry-2-go style and is in the freezer.

Without listing the recipe, which is really proprietory to the chef who runs the course but as a general indication how things are done in an AIR restaurant:

Oil is seasoned by frying whole spices

Then finely chopped onions are fried until brown and caramelised and soft



At this stage garlic ginger paste is added, then dry spices . These are really the equivalent of BIR dry mix powder, but note that all this goes into the gravy, not the cooking pan.





Tomato paste (not puree) is added plus some water to allow it to move around in the pan and it is simmered until the oil glistens.



Note the consistency of the "gravy". Also it's a lot redder than the flash photo. So in the cooking pan this thick gravy, and the precooked meat is added to more spiced oil then gradually heated and diluted with stock and water and finished (in this case with coconut cream) until the right consistency.

Just tasting the "gravy" it's sharp and spicy and chewy, and really you couldn't stand eating a tablespoon of it without wincing. Like I posted this is bottom up stuff not top down  ;D

Clearly this particular gravy already has its characteristics set in stone so I wouldn't be able to use it in a Vindaloo or a Korma, but perfect for a Madras. Which is why in A.I.R. there are a few different gravies for different "families" of curries which are fine tuned in the cooking pan with various extra spices and additions.

Now I'm doing a Madras - Chennai is well down the East Coast of India and in coconut country, and Madras in Australia seems to be prepared with a fair amount of coconut cream or dried coconut cream powder as it's not presumably a (for example) Punjabi style dish.

Will post results. I'm bringing sausages for those in the club who don't like curry. 

On a cross cultural note, I'm a Geordie who has been over here for about 35 years but as an impoverished student in Cardiff in the 1970s whose "big eats" for the week was a Biryani or Vindaloo at an eating establishment in Roath or Canton and later moving back to Newcastle and eating similar in the Bigg Market, I don't find a heck of a lot different between the BIR and AIR outcomes for the likes of Madras, Vindaloo, CTM etc. Both let the spices and - most importantly the oils - to shine through which I think is the main thing, the gravies are the vehicles that allow this to happen.

I've been to one cooking class so far. The "gravy" is more like a thick sauce or paste, and the difference between AIR and BIR seems to be that the gravy is based on fried onions, not boiled, and just about everything goes into the gravy such as the garlic ginger paste, the spices which would normally go in to the BIR cooking pan as "dry mix" etc. Like BIR gravy the AIR gravy is simmered until the oil breaks out.

So whilst the ingredients are just about identical between BIR and AIR, along with other aspects such as the pre-cooked meats, BIR is sort of "top down" where the thin base gravy and other ingredients are cooked to thicken up to the required consistency. Whilst AIR is "bottom up", the thick gravy and ingredients are diluted by stock, water, cream etc to thin out to required consistency.

They sort of "meet in the middle", as far as I can discern by flavour of the finished curry.

Of course you can't have just one base gravy or everything would taste the same, which is the main difference between the styles I guess. We did a basic sort of gravy that you would use with a Madras at the lesson, and the chef brought samples of a vindaloo gravy to take home and try. Wow it was incredible the difference. I've made the vindaloo gravy myself and looking forward to getting back to future lessons, best thing I've done in a long time.

Edit: great to meet Mark as well, plus another forum member who is also on my home brew forum  ;D