If authenticated by the proper panel of adjudicators, that Rucksack needs to be kept in a vault at the National Bureau of Standards - along with the Slug, the Pint, the Inch and the Standard British Handful...

Spotty

"And in his den you sometimes meet
With curry fit for man to eat"
Stone Talk by Sir Richard Burton 1865


I was raised in the UK during the 1940s and 50s to know curry as a yellow concoction, done up with raw curry powder and having raisins and bits of apple added; I had my first real curry in London in 1960. It was a chicken curry, off the bone, with pilau rice and it completely blew me away. That 'Pakistani' (today we'd say Bangladeshi) restaurant has long vanished but I often wonder how I would enjoy that same meal today. The restaurant was badly ventilated and had 'the smell' - the curry definitely had a lot of oil (probably ghee back then) and I don't doubt that the cooking methods were very similar to those we discuss here. Even then, there were quite a lot of 'Indian' restaurants in London (maybe twenty in the S. Ken/Chelsea/Fulham area) - but there were virtually none at all in the provinces that I ever saw. Tandoori had not yet arrived but although restaurants had big differences, most were pretty authentic 'BIR' tasting. You could get a good square meal of meat and rice for about five shillings (25p)! That was great for students.

Of course we tried to duplicate restaurant curries at home; buying numerous recipe books and of course you can predict the results!

Since then I reckon I have had well over a thousand curries - and I have tried them in lots of places. Regional tastes reflect local preferences of course - just as you are more likely to get a 'sweet' curry in the UK provinces (yuk). Japanese love curry, but it's more the Chinese sort - quite 'yellow' and not hot - but the supposed authentic curries I tried there were very mild and, yes, a bit sweet. Murthu's in Singapore is one of the very best I have ever had, but the absolute worst was in Iasi, Romania, where a Bangladeshi fellow had put up a sign - what he made wasn't recognizable as curry. I've had some excellent curries in the USA and Canada and, maybe surprisingly, a pretty good one in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I have faith there are good curries in Australia but I haven't found one yet.

Can you tell that I suffer from a serious addiction?

Spotty

Quote from: coolinshot on March 28, 2007, 01:01 PM
The active ingredient in turmeric is curcumin and that in ginger are gingerol and hexahydrocurcumin1-3.

Good Lord, this is impressive allright! Now tumeric turns brown if you heat it too strongly; whether that changes the flavour I don't know. But what flavour does tumeric impart anyway - earthy? Or paprika for that matter - gulashy? Don't the other spices swamp them? Certainly the two work together to give a most appetising (and safe) colour.

Quote from: Curry King on March 28, 2007, 10:50 AM
I don't quite get what your saying regards using small amounts, surely unless you are cooking enough curry to last months the majority of us will always be making a single portion.   You mention 10 pieces of chicken as being an example of small, to me thats a regular curry and in the case of a vindaloo where potato would be added could be seen as over sized?

Curry King - what I was really trying to say was that your burner must supply enough heat so that, after you've added some components, the temperature rises again sufficiently to restore 'sizzle' and not just 'bubble'.

Let me try to say that more scientifically! Imagine a mass of cold food just dumped into a very hot pan. Of course the temperature will drop at first. Heat from the burner will cause the temperature to rise again - at least to the boiling point of water ~100 deg. If the heating is uniform, the water content should boil off before there's a further temperature rise - but it's NOT uniform and if there is enough heat supplied, part of the mass will be boiling and the oily part especially will be at a higher temperature - hence the sizzle.

If there's not enough heat supplied you'll get that depressing bubbling. Reduce the 'mass' of the curry sufficiently and you'll reach a point where almost any burner can supply the needed sizzle! I don't know if that's ten bits of chicken or two.

Again, I don't presume to preach upon the subject of "BIR" curryology - but I am pretty comfortable with the physics and some of the chemistry.

Cory Ander

I don't have such a list but most of the common spices used in Indian cooking seem to be temperature survivors. In contrast, from my attempts at Thai cooking, I know that basil is not - you have to put it in late or you don't get the heavenly aroma.  Garlic, too seems to suffer from heat, but the residue, while tasting different, is still lovely. Some Chinese cooks are expert at retaining 'garlicy' taste.

As I mentioned, I have a hunch that successful chefs know by instinct which spices should be added when. Surely there are people in this august group who have such an instinct - and know which spices can take a lot of heat and which can't?

While on this topic, I should like to ask about your namesake, coriander: about the seeds, which just about everybody adds to curry (Malaysians too, who seldom use jeera). If you taste the seeds they do have a mild aroma (but nothing like the intensity of, say, jeera or cardamom) - it has always puzzled me what coriander seeds actually DO - on the face of it they seem too mild-tasting to impart much flavour. Could somebody please straighten me out here?

George:

Thanks for your kind reply, you are very correct - I see that I should qualify what I said.

I totally agree that you can reach any desired temperature with bog-standard equipment & below. But here is the big point: can this hob sustain itself for long enough to give satisfaction?

When you add a reasonable quantity of onions, meat, whatever; does this simply fizz for a few moments, only to collapse into a flaccid, quiescent mass - merely boiling instead of sizzling & smoking fiercely? Domestic hobs don't put out enough heat to 'keep it up' - hence you need something not far short of a commercial jet engine underneath to accomplish the task.

I suppose, otherwise, the only way this might work is to use very small quantities - for example the way Andy does, using 10 pieces of chicken - see his recent recipe posts.

I reckon this goes back to our physics days at school where we were taught the difference between heat and temperature!

Spotty

The erudition displayed here humbles me.

We see a list of about 30 spices. In most cases the 'essence' of the spice is contained in an 'essential oil' (e.g. oil of cloves) and this has to be extracted from the spice and imparted to the sauce and other components of the dish.

The technique used must employ oil as the 'transfer' medium because essential oils do not dissolve in water. Some of these oils degrade with heat (e.g. essence of basil) yet heat is vital in the transfer process. I think this is why the spices have to be treated separately sometimes - a good chef instinctively knowing which spices transfer best at what temperature/frying-duration.  Probably the spices used in curry are those which best withstand the necessary high temperatures.

For the uninitiated a list of spices together with their resistance to temperature might be useful.

Please do not think from my quite-arrogant tone that I have all the answers. If I did I probably wouldn't be giving you the benefit of my opinion.

"If you don't know how to do it yourself at least you can teach others".

Spotty

Coolinshot said:

"Hello Spotty (hope I'm not being too familiar)"

Not at all. Although the third degree burns on my arms have now healed, tumeric has been incorporated into the scar tissue, giving a particularly pleasing effect which  inflames the opposite sex.

"My neighbours have stopped complaining about my loud TV but bang on the wall when I get my frying pan out ("turn that blasted garlic down" they shout)."

Let them pound - the Philistines - if they couldn't appreciate your '1812' overture delivered at full volume on Sunday morning, how could they ever hope to savour your latest Murg Phall? Throw in another fistfull while screaming: "Up your dhoti!"

But returning to the academic issue here, do we in the post-Einstein era deride Sir Isaac Newton?

No sir, we do not.

KD has her/his place in the history of "BIR" curry synthesis which ought to be recognized. Let those who howl produce their copies of the book. See? It's as I thought: splattered all over with yellow stains!

Spotty

A fair few people are whacking away at poor old KD here! KD's curry recipes don't work for me and, for example, that chicken curry which adds jeera and garam marsala right at the end, virtually raw, looks a fatal step in hindsight.

What KD did however was to introduce me (way back then) to the concept of curry sauce based on garlic, ginger, onion and tomato - as well as the idea of pre-cooking the meat (albeit then throwing out the juices, alas). Still KD has done well out of the book because it took people a step closer (and some stopped there, satisfied). Not me.

Combing through many of the posts here, amazed at the erudition  (possibly deserving PhDs in certain cases), I?ll confess I'm a scientist too and the following insights have come to me:

(1) The medium that carries the taste and aroma of the spices - their essential oils - into the meat is OIL in large quantity. Chemically speaking the oil concentrates them as water never could (chemists, say "partition coefficient"). Too little oil and the essences are lost.

(2) TEMPERATURE has to be high. Higher than almost any household hob can manage (unless you make tiny quantities). High enough to extract those essential oils from the spices AND to impart a delicious 'singed' aroma to your curry! You curry ought to taste like a badly ventilated Indian restaurant smells!

(3) You ought not to eat "BIR" style curry too often - not only are there vast amounts of oil BUT the high temperatures used will have 'cracked' the oil (and other chemical components) into new compounds, some of which may be very bad for you.

(4) If you want to duplicate these dishes at home, get a huge gas ring and set it up like your BBQ in the garden - and be prepared for that area to look pretty squalid in short order! (Oil splattered all over). Loss of friendly neighbours and a fall in local house prices should not deter you.

(5) Australians are not rated too highly for their curries. I think this is not quite fair but confess that one of the worst curries I ever had was at the Raj in Melbourne (famous for the cricket memorabilia all over its walls but quite infamous for its curries in ad. 2000). Sure there are good restaurants there, have to be!

Please know that I am no upstart, even though I just found this excellent forum - I have been trying (and failing) to cook curries restaurant style since my first addiction in London in 1960.

Thank you Mike. I had more time to look through the many posts here and have to say it's a forum after my own heart. This "old" posting caught my eye because it came close to the question I'm asking - sorry for the unconventional extract:


Quote from: pete on March 28, 2005, 03:59:36 PM

"This weekend, for the first time in ages, I went to a take-away with an open plan kitchen. They only used one temperature for every stage of everything they were cooking for me and other customers - full blast heat.

I suggest that, to get as close to the restaurant kitchen approach, and taste, in your own home, there are a few things which are absolutely essential:
- a gas hob on full blast (If I had electric, I'd change the hob for sure!)
- figure out how to ignite/flambe the food every few seconds whilst cooking and rolling around the wok. The effect of fire must surely have a significant effect on the taste.
- unbelievably unhealthy quantities of vegetable oil and salt."

Cheers
Spotty