Hey Gary
            I bet if you could use their cooker, you could do it
And I think if they had your curry gravy, they could do it
I have spent so much time trying different things, talking to chefs, arranging cooking demos.
Any sane person would say it's impossible
Why are we still trying?
I could arrange another demo, but what's the point?
What they do looks dead easy, I can't see why there should be any difficulty doing it at home.
But there is
I am still very interested in what happens Gary, maybe something will become apparent

Every bought curry has always given me indigestion the next day
Every single one
I don't ever get that from home cooked ones.
Even my best curries have never done that
I take little comfort from knowing they are probably healthier
I do wonder if it's worth the time we spend making curries
For ?6 I can buy a first rate curry with pillau rice
Or I can spend four hours making one that isn't quite as good
I'll never give up, but I do get dicouraged

Quote from: CashNCurry on February 15, 2006, 07:12 PM
After watering down - how much did you get? How many meals will it make? I'm thinking of doubling up the quantities as I have large dishes.
Thanks,
CashNCurry

After watering I made five curries
Of course you need the precooked chicken,veg or prawns to go in the sauce
The lovely thing was that the sauce was so good
I think it's the combination of the long boiled sauce with the newly pureed tinned tomatoes.
I am sure you could use passata if you wanted
Several people on this site have seen this used in takeaways
Darth uses it in his recipes
I'll be doing this recipe again at the weekend

Hi John
          You're having some success too!
Something around this general recipe is right
It sounds silly, but this is such a delicate taste it is very easy to ruin with spices
Any changes I make will be subtle

Can you give us the full recipe for the curry base then?
I think everyone would be very appreciative!
Thanks

I have been getting so many complaints about the smell from my cooking that I have been trying to find less offensive ways to do it.
I shut all the internal doors to my kitchen, and open the windows but everywhere still reeks of fried onions and garlic.
The kids have been picked on, for their clothes smelling like curry
So I have turned to the casserole dish, and although it is definitely NOT the way restaurants do it,
it has produced some of my best results.
I didn't stink the house out either

Ingredients 1:-

3 medium onions roughly chopped
1 medium carrot chopped
1/2 green pepper chopped
1 stick of celery chopped
2 desertspoons of garlic ginger puree
3 black cardamoms split (very, very important)
1 bay leaf
2 inch cinnamon stick
1/4 teaspoon of thyme
1 desertspoon salt
250 ml oil
No tomatoes & no tomato puree


I added this to the casserole dish and it nearly filled it
I then put in enough water to come up to an inch below the vegetables
All these ingredients are familiar enough and I know they DO go into curry gravy
I cooked in the middle of the oven on medium heat for an hour

This gave off an aroma, but it was one that made you feel hungry, not " what are you cooking now?!!!"

After an hour, I opened the casserole dish and stirred
Nothing had burnt or dried out
I then added

1 desertspoon of turmeric
1 desertspoon of paprika
1 teaspoon of East End Garam Masala

Again, I know they go into the gravy
A lot of emphasis has been placed on Paprika at my demos
They call it tomato powder!
I have heard too many people say that garam masala, goes into the gravy, to discount it.
But we all know it can also ruin any curry too.
So only a teaspoon

Cook on for another hour and then leave till the next day.
Remove the whole spices
Remove as much oil as possible
Puree
Water down to a consistancy of tomato soup
Put the oil and whole spices back in
At this stage it does taste very nice
Reheat in the oven with the casserole dish until boiling

Add
Half a tin of pureed canned tomatoes
1 desertspoon of garlic ginger puree

Cook fifteen minutes more and you will have a very fine restaurant sauce
It also looks correct
There is nothing new in the above ingredients, but this was a very successful way of achieving close to what I am after
I tried adding proper restaurant spice mix (which I had been given) and this did NOT improve it.
To get this right it is a balance & very easy to get wrong
One flavour can so easily cover another
If you wanted to add spice mix, then maybe you shouldn't add the garam masala earlier in the recipe
I think adding some prefried onions to the start of the recipe might improve it too

It's mentioned, in the Bruce Edward's Curry House Cookery, how hot the curry gravy is, when you blend it
I have noticed, on many occasions, that it loses it's aroma and taste when it's pureed hot.
The last time, I had a really successful result, was when I pureed the gravy on the following day.
When, I did that it, kept nearly all it's character (take out the whole spices though, then put them back after blending.)
I reckon that there is still that certain little something, missing from it's flavour
It must be how the onions are cooked before adding water at the start
They must be fried first
Either that, or maybe some pre fried onions are added to the base sauce
We all know that they add "pre fried onion" to many dishes so this is an ingredient they would have around.
I have never seen them pre fry the onions, I wonder what quantities they do it in?
They never seem to have more than half a yoghurt carton's worth next to the cooker.

But this adjusted muttley recipe is definitely one of my favourites.
It needs salt but definitely NO tomatoes though
They ruin it and mask the desired flavour.
I think that, that's what we all are doing
We hide the "taste"
It is something really simple and can only be found by very subtle ommisions and inclusions
Maybe it's only the flavour of turmeric?

I pureed a quarter can of tomatoes and heated this with a couple of ladles of this base and 1 desertspoon of garlic ginger puree.
It was a extremely good result
I can still taste the slight difference, but everyone who tried this was very impresssed.
"Just like a takeaway" they said
I wish......but close

The only green condiment I have seen is the Raita
The green colour coming from the coriander and mint
I have never heard or seen this coconut mixture
Sorry

Quote from: jb on January 28, 2006, 02:03 PM
Just got my copy of the Kushi Book(Better late than never!!!)? Is it that bad??? Seem to recall a few negative comments about it....The recipes do seem very similar to the ones I've seen on this site.The only strange part I saw was the onion mixture for the base sauce-putting the spices in a net as opposed to just throwing in a pan???

Hi JB
? ? ? ?I got very quickly disillusioned by the book
The base came our very aniseed tasting, and everything I made with it, was with that unusual taste.
I made the chicken tikka sauce and thought that was pretty odd too.
It used kewra water
This stuff is usually put into indian confectionery
It has a smell rather than a taste
A bit like rose water
Anyhow the whole sauce seemed like nothing I had ever tasted before
Everyone in my house is curry mad, but noone liked that particular recipe
I liked the precook vegetable method
I thought that was excellent but that's the only part of the book I would repeat.
Some people on this site had more favourable results, but I was very disappointed.
Have you tried anything yet?
Better results might be achieved by removing the aromatic spices
In my opinion, star anise should only go in rice dishes

Looks good
If you fry the onions first, you should get really nice curry oil
I'm going to do a base like this next
Thanks for the pics

Has anyone got access to a catering gas cooker?
I think the heat from these gas rings plays a very important part
This is the missing element
It transforms the curry gravy from a "boiled" taste to a fried one
Last night I heated up small amounts, of previously cooked curries, in the microwave.
It almost dried them out and I needed to add a little water back
But it turned these curries very savoury and sweet
It also boosted the aroma
I can't get that intensity of heat, from my gas cooker, with the quantities I cook in
Surely, after all our research, there is nothing else it could be
Noone has turned up a missing ingredient
All the demos reveal no special way to cook them
In fact when you see them cooked, it almost seems to be done in a leisurely way
No hurry about anything
I have seen chefs heat the oil, and a bit of curry gravy with spice, then sit down for two minutes before inspecting the pan!