No microwave? I know what you mean, it's hard to reheat rice without one.
I'd say make fried rice/pilau. On max heat use a genrous amount of oil, fry a bit of finely chopped onion/spring onion, add some whole spices (cloves, cinnamon/cassia, aniseed, asian bay leaf, cardamom) and add the rice. Stirfry for a few mins and then reduce the heat and let it cook through. Dont let it burn (i.e use a non-stick, iron or alimunium pan).
Adding a couple of eggs after the spices and stirfrying is good as is adding coriander at the end.
Almost as quick as using the micro.

People seem to buy much bigger bags of spices than me. I always buy the smallest i can (except for coriander) to make sure they're fresher and because they last such a long time.
I've found supermarkets are a good place to buy as they tend to be fresher (check by looking at best before dates). I take the ones from the back to make sure it's the newest batch. I've found the bags in asian shops tend to be older (although if you check the dates you can find fresh stuff too).

Quote from: SnS on November 13, 2008, 05:53 PM
Too many spices to keep in a cupboard. I keep my spices in a spare room  :

Nice!  ;D

Quote from: JerryM on November 14, 2008, 07:05 AM
Quite right CA. Bangladeshi are the best for me by a long way. I almost now ask the chef's origin as it's only recently that i've realised that the sign "Indian" TA or Restaurant is very misleading.

I used to think that but i wouldnt say it's very misleading. Bangladeshis were Indians until recently. I guess they think that less people will know what bangladeshi food is like than indian.

If you're in london head to brick lane. There's taj stores, bangla city, bangla town and another shop off brick lane which sells these pans. They seem to generaly just have small pans but they're the ones used in the takeaways. They're very cheap, maybe ?7.
Stainless steel is a bad conductor of heat - you need another metal as a base of the pan to make them work properly. This is usually iron or aluminium and is what they use in more expensive pans (le creuset, jamie oliver's ones etc). Lots of shops sell pure stainless steel pans now which is basically a con which they get away with because of lack of knowledge. Ikea pans would be a good example of a complete con.
BIRs know what they're doing which is why they use the aluminium pans. Iron pans  are good too, and cheap. BIRs use these as well (karahi/balti pans).
It's best to buy equipment at asian supermarkets IMO as they dont rip you off.

Quote from: Curry King on June 25, 2008, 01:47 PM
I think a lot of BIR's use them as marinades and I know at least one I've been to that turns their regular dishes into "balti" with the addition of Patak paste  :-X

I know one that does there. It's a pretty good curry.

Quote from: extrahotchillie on January 29, 2008, 08:31 PM
Why give them 1 out of 10 give them a zero or even a minus; if they are that bad why give them any score out of ten at all?

A minus score wouldnt be a score out of 10 would it

Just to point out that red chilli in lehman st, whitechapel/aldgate in east london is not owned by the same people. Wouldnt want anyone passing it by, it's class.

They precooked onions in the restaurant i was shown. They were the large chunks used for jalfrezi, balti etc. He said they did it so it saved time for those dishes (along with a little green pepper too). He said he added tamarind powder which was surprising. I suppose the sourness brings out the sweetness, in the same way salt was mentioned earlier.
I dont think it's a big deal either way, some of the onions in the dish should be sweet and you can get there however you want

Ingredients generally combine better when hot, which is why cooking is usually done by heating things up (pretty obvious but bear with me!). It's the same principle with pre-mixed ingredients. Just because you've cooked the base sauce previously doesnt mean that the principal is any different. If you've cooked the aromatics well and the base well, you may as well combine them well to optimize the end result.
I see it as similar to the argument for seasoning with salt throughout and not just at the end. If you add an imperfect/unseasoned mix or sauce to another similar one you will end up with something that is 'ok'. If you season something that is ok then it becomes 'pretty good'. However, if you add a perfectly seasoned sauce or mix to another similar one and then adjust the seasoning of the mixture if necessary you will get a perfect end result.

What you're doing with a BIR curry is cooking the aromatic ingredients first (garlic, onion, spices, tom puree, fenugreek leaves etc) and then wanting them to permiate throughout the whole curry.

When you add the first small ladle of heated sauce to the mix it should start bubbling and sizzling quite loudly. There should also be a fair amount of steam. When stirred viciously with a spoon and with the pan shaken, everything should come together and mix perfectly, giving off v strong aromas. It seems obvious/instinctive that this has cooked better than if you add a load of sauce and nothing happens.