Scandal? What scandal? Send me some! Horse used to be my favourite meat back in the 70s - especially when I was on holiday in Southern Italy.

It was commonly used in BIR restaurants in Cardiff at any rate where the menu would generally read like this:

Beef Dopiaza
Lamb Dopiaza
Meat Dopiaza
Chicken Dopiaza etc

And no, it's not an urban myth along with the frozen cats and the half a labrador in the Chinese restaurant freezer, whenever I asked the Maitre d' what the meat was on the menu he was always forthcoming.

Sort of in the same taste spectrum as venison and - surprisingly - kangaroo, not beefy really. Actually would be a fair sub for goat.
My Dad always used to go for the horse as well, as he said "what would you rather eat, some fly bitten cow that's been up to it's knees in mud and shyte or a well groomed and stabled horse that just didn't run fast enough  ;D

The Irish horse trade got knocked in the head in the 70s - older forum members may still remember the Daily Mirror publishing gruesome pics on Page 1, but the furore was more about cruelty than health concerns.

Hi Sean.
Any good currywurst recipes??? 

Latest advice is that oils high in monounsaturates such as Olive oil are better for you than polyunsaturates, hence the Mediterranean Diet etc. They have a marked influence on reducing low density cholesterol and increasing the good high density.

An excellent oil with very high smoke point and very high in mono is Rice Bran Oil. Becoming very popular in Australia (it mostly comes from Thailand and is favoured by most Thai restaurants, who established the import "channel" for the stuff initially) and this is my major cooking oil nowadays.

Knew a guy called Richard Puller. On no occasion were we allowed to call him by the D name. Also knew a Joseph King "Ah, you've got to be..."
;D

When I'm doing a small batch of something such as Butter Chicken for the Mrs (I can't use the Glasgow base as it's quite spicy and any hint of chilli I'm a dead man  ;D) I do a fairly quick Australian Indian Restaurant base which is mostly finely diced onions fried in spiced oil until soft then the GGP added and fried in with the onions, until all well caramelised - then the equivalent of dry mix is added, tomato paste, and cooked further till the oil glistens.

Then the curry is assembled with the base, the precooked chicken, coconut cream powder, ground almonds or cashews, and simmered for a few minutes to blend in the flavours then finished with cream.

I did a batch last night and spiced my serve with chilli powder, but heck the garlic and ginger was so mellow and prominent - One of the best I've made. I often feel with BIR that when I nuke the GGP in hot oil I'm possibly driving off aromas that I'd rather retain in the curry?

I think SJ66's point is that curries should be more like casseroles as opposed to being "assembled" from a bland base which is then spiced up in a separate pan.

For those who are looking for the elusive 70s taste rather than to replicate the current BIR offerings this is an interesting concept. On another forum they refer to an "interview" with an elderly retired Bangladeshi chef who worked in restaurants at the time who said that when BIR restaurants started to become popular the common features in most "Indian Restaurant" kitchens was:

No base sauce
No dry mix
Mutton and Chicken were the only meat, initially.
Pots of full flavoured "meat curry" and pots of "veg curry" that would be simmering and I would suppose could be turned into a meat Dopiaza or chicken Dopiaza or a meat Vindaloo or a Chicken Vindaloo just by the addition of meat or chicken etc etc.

The way the menus were set out suggests this could be the case. In Australian Indian Restaurants - many of them founded by UK re-migrants (it that's a word) who had cooked in the UK, they still have a family of different dedicated gravies such as nut gravy, vindaloo gravy, butter gravy etc but nothing that equates to the BIR common base. This could be a historical "pointer" to the traditions they brought with them from their UK kitchens thirty years ago at a time when there were few existing Indian restaurants in Australia.

Now that I've got a few litres of Glasgow base to play with I'm actually planning to do some side by sides with for example a Beef Vindaloo cooked BIR style in the ally pan, and a version slow cooked like a casserole to see which one seems closer to the old-school taste . Last one I did in the slow cooker actually turned out more 70s from my recollections of those days.

Quote from: acrabat on January 26, 2013, 08:55 PM
I am curious about something. I read a lot of members are looking for that 70's/80's taste to their curries but at the same time are concerned about the amount of oil in this base. If I look back at the curries from those decades that we were served in my area, they usually came with a quarter an inch of oil floating on top when you opened the container. BB1's base is way less oily than they used to be here. But I suppose this is the home of deep fried everything. ;D ;D ;D

I remember exactly the same thing with the curries in Cardiff in the 1970s. Remember that in those days vegetable oil was not common at home, most cooking was done with lard, dripping or butter or something like "Fairy" a block of white fatty stuff if I remember rightly - in fact veg oil never appeared in our own kitchen until about 1980 and was regarded as being a bit "posh food".
So my overwhelming memory of 1970s curries - and this was before take aways had been invented - was being served a metal dish of mysterious morsels swimming in pools of lovely golden oil that we would soak up with our paratha or rice. Yum.

Edit: Off topic, as an example of the culture, I grew up in Council Flats in Newcastle and Mam had a bottle of olive oil in the bathroom medicine cabinet for earwax I suppose. When I was 7 I drank it - tasted quite nice IIRC - and Mam rushed me off to the doctors in a panic  ;D

Missed that one, CH mine turned out but a shadow of that but not too bad  - I'll try again  ;D ;D

Anyway back on topic, I made a version of the base - I went to buy 6 kg of onions - Aldi had a good special on 1kg nets of smallish onions that I guess would be similar to the Dutch Onions used in the UK.

After putting 3 nets in the trolley I thought "no way on this planet"  ;D so I halved the recipe and as you can see I've ended up with heaps of it anyway - these are 750ml T/A containers so I guess about five litres overall, with a cup left in the stockpot which I'm going to use in a Brinjal Bhaji - when I walked round to the supermarket just now to get the containers they had lovely young firm eggplant on sale.

I note there's no Brinjal in the side dish forum - when I lived in Cardiff I loved the BB and also the Bindi Bhaji being a bit of a vego student in those days and I'd love to recreate the roasted oily saucy dish I remember. If it turns out I'll post in the sides forum .

Also good advice on the other thread, rather than going out and buying five kilos of onions, I'll get six and keep topping, tailing and peeling until I end up with actual five kilos of prepared onions.