hi,Mark J
curry every night, i am addicted to curry.
thanks
ghanna

hi, curryqueen
i have been tricked and deceived by so many chefs, cookery book writers, formulas on the net, because of that i am very careful now.
thank you
ghanna

hi,all
i asked him a lot of questions.
yes they re-use the oil ,it give the gravy a nice taste and encourage fermintation of the gravy? specially at night when the temperature of the restaurant goes down and there is no activity.as well they re-use it because they want to save money.
Not the oil it self which help the fermentation ,but the liquids that goes back to the gravy with the oil.
he told me every restaurant and take away is doing this
he thinks that the missing taste that all of us are looking for? is the fermintation which is happening in the gravy? because it is? never referegrated? it is always on the cooker (room temperature).
he told me every chef has his own secret spice formula ,chefs are very secretive about what they use , very expensive to employ, if you are not good with them they will leave you and go and at the end restaurant owners are going to loose ,because customers are getting use to specail taste and ingredients in their curry and if it is not the same every time they ordered they will notice it,and start asking questions,at the end we tell them but in majority of cases we loose this customer.
he told me that curry gravy basic? ingredients are the same in every restaurant and take away
onions ,garlic,ginger,tinned tomato,tomato paste,carrots, sweet red pepper, oil, plain water (no STOCK or MILK )? , salt, then you can choose from the following? (potatoes, chick pea, red lentils,sweet potatoes,? celery, ....etc) these are thickeners and give body to the gravy ).
two ingredients that the restaurant owner don't know is :
SPICE BLEND
HERB BLEND
he told me these make a great difference between a first class gravy and a normal gravy
the chef and only the chef know their ingredients.
i told him all the spices are the same ,he said no? there is VINDALLO ,bhuna,tikka,tandoria, MADRAS ,KORMA .. . etc ,pastes and spice blend in the market are they the same ?not all blends are the same .
i asked him what other ingredients in the gravy? ?tomato ketchup .....yes i notice he puts it .
sugar... yes if the onion taste is a little bitter.
monosodium glutamate? ? ....... i don't know may be the chef is using it,
tamarind puree....yes if the gravy is very sweet because the onion was sweet.
coloring ...... i don't know the chef know
any other secret ingredient? ?.........i don't know but the chef know.
at the end he told me making a gravy is a like any thing else in? cooking you have to taste and adjust ingredients from batch to batch.
do you fry garlic and ginger in the beginning of making the gravy or you add it at the end ?...
one of the chefs that i employed was doing it in the beginning and another one was adding it at the end with the oil? ?....it depend on which chef.

this is all as much as i can remember now.
i hope that i helped
thanks
ghanna

hi,yellowfingers
thank you
you really made me laugh ,specially after all this disappointment
ghanna

hi ,curryqueen
they used only 0.25 pint water in the gravy that they showed you ,this is why it is thick .
you need to use at least 2 pounds of water ( 1 liter ) i.e the same weight of onion.
this is the classic proportion of onion to water as i have been told by different chefs,
but in the restaurant when they showed you they couldnot use this amount of water because it is going to take a long time to evaporate, the water measurement is not that important you can add more if you find out that the onion is still raw and not yet cooked.
i am sorry it didnot work for you this time.
thanks
ghanna

hi ,all
please see this link as well , there is a nice recipe that use tomato ketchup and cashewnut  as well
i tried this recipe before it is excellent , my be it was a Little sweet for me but you can reduce the amount of tomato ketchup to your liking.
please do use the black salt it is very important to the taste ,you can find it in the indian stores , it is one of the ingredients of a spice blend called  CHAT MASALA
the taste of this black salt remind me of boiled eggs smell, but believe me it give a nice flavor to the chicken at the end after you cook it.
another ingredient is  MUSTARD OIL  as well try to use it , i know there is a lot of talk about it , but it is up to you  ,any way you can use any kind of oil but not olive oil .


http://www.askachef.com/recipe/recipedetails.cfm?recipeiD=1052


thanks
ghanna

hi, curryqueen
no ,sorry  i have just found it in the web while i was surfing.
i sat down and read it ,it is actually a curry gravy  but the chef is dividing it into two calling the first  ONION MASALA and the second  TOMATO MASALA.
please look at it carefully and you will find that it is the CURRY GRAVY  that all of us know .

he is using a nice combination of spices, and as well he is using cashewnut in the gravy.
as soon as i will find a chance i am going to try it and report back.
thanks
ghanna

hi,all
a very nice recipe for chicken tikka masala by a top chef
thanks
ghanna

starchefs.com/features/indian_spotlight/html/chicken_tikka_d_prasad.shtml

hi , Adamski
very good idea ,could you please come back and report .
thanks
ghanna

hi ,all
i received the curry kit package this morning and i just had a look at it.
nothing new , the curry base  is very very similar to the one from the balti kitchen DVD and Pete bless him typed it above.
Blondi please save your money ,it is not worse it.
another waste of money for me .
thanks
ghanna