So...
At long last, I got around to making this Madras. I made a half-quantity of Dip's base and a small amount of his mix powder according to the recipes, and I pre-cooked a half-leg of lamb following Dan Toombs 'Stewed Lamb' recipe.
My goto base is JB's nowadays, and I always dilute the finished base with the same amount of water to achieve a thin-soup consistency. It works for me. Given that Dips's base is cooked in much the same way as JB's, I should have doubled the quantity by adding water. For some unknown reason, I only added 25% water, which brought the full quantity up to 2.1 litres or 7x 300ml portions. This was to prove significant in the subsequent cooking of the curry.
Anyway, like Curryhell, I heated the oil in my pan, added the salt and G/G paste (Panpot's Ashoka recipe) closely followed by the tomato puree, mix powder, methi leaves, chilli powder and lemon juice together with a little base just to prevent the spices burning.
Then I added the pre-cooked lamb along with all of the base gravy which immediately began to erupt like lava and immediately caramelise on the sides of the pan. I didn't even have the flame up to full as I usually would, but of course, this was entirely due to my failure to sufficiently dilute the base in the first place. Had I been thinking straight, I would simply have added some water to the pan from the kettle - but I wasn't and didn't.
I put a splatter guard over the pan and let it erupt away for 3-4 minutes before turning the heat off and scraping the caramelisation from the sides of the pan back into the curry which, by this time had lost most of it's liquidity. It wasn't *quite* dry, but it was getting there!
So, what did it taste like? Well, I have to say that it was pretty decent! There was enough sauce left to stick to the rice and the lamb was beautifully moist and tender. The tablespoon of chilli powder was rather more heat than I would normally use in a single-portion recipe - suffice to say that the curry passed the 'bead-of-sweat-on-the-forehead' test! It certainly turned out a lot better than I expected and, without a doubt, I've paid good money for worse curries!
At long last, I got around to making this Madras. I made a half-quantity of Dip's base and a small amount of his mix powder according to the recipes, and I pre-cooked a half-leg of lamb following Dan Toombs 'Stewed Lamb' recipe.
My goto base is JB's nowadays, and I always dilute the finished base with the same amount of water to achieve a thin-soup consistency. It works for me. Given that Dips's base is cooked in much the same way as JB's, I should have doubled the quantity by adding water. For some unknown reason, I only added 25% water, which brought the full quantity up to 2.1 litres or 7x 300ml portions. This was to prove significant in the subsequent cooking of the curry.
Anyway, like Curryhell, I heated the oil in my pan, added the salt and G/G paste (Panpot's Ashoka recipe) closely followed by the tomato puree, mix powder, methi leaves, chilli powder and lemon juice together with a little base just to prevent the spices burning.
Then I added the pre-cooked lamb along with all of the base gravy which immediately began to erupt like lava and immediately caramelise on the sides of the pan. I didn't even have the flame up to full as I usually would, but of course, this was entirely due to my failure to sufficiently dilute the base in the first place. Had I been thinking straight, I would simply have added some water to the pan from the kettle - but I wasn't and didn't.
I put a splatter guard over the pan and let it erupt away for 3-4 minutes before turning the heat off and scraping the caramelisation from the sides of the pan back into the curry which, by this time had lost most of it's liquidity. It wasn't *quite* dry, but it was getting there!
So, what did it taste like? Well, I have to say that it was pretty decent! There was enough sauce left to stick to the rice and the lamb was beautifully moist and tender. The tablespoon of chilli powder was rather more heat than I would normally use in a single-portion recipe - suffice to say that the curry passed the 'bead-of-sweat-on-the-forehead' test! It certainly turned out a lot better than I expected and, without a doubt, I've paid good money for worse curries!
