Quote from: George on February 15, 2013, 10:58 PM

Quote from: BIR-TY on February 15, 2013, 09:16 PM
I was talking to the owner of a restaurant the other day. I asked him if his chef called the base sauce garabi, grabbi. he said he did, they all did, meaning his staff including the younger ones that spoke perfect English. He said that is what the sauce is known as in its own right.

I wonder if they generally use English language in the kitchen and then drop in what I assume to be a foreign word 'garabi' or whether it's the word used in the middle of conversations and banter in their Bangladeshi or Indian language.

Thats only when you appear with an invoice for them.

Quotetends to be made up from individual ingredients rather than a preprepared sauce.

That could be said about curries rather than bir in general SS

Quoteh4ppy-chris is getting unnecessary grief.

Two points for me on this;

Who else is on cr0 is asking for money  for "recipes"?

I've picked up a huge amount of information up from here buckshee!..Thanks for that

(not meaning to be snide)
a good cr0 member but h4ppychris has no back story or credible bir experience(if you look at his posts) to warrant a fee.

He should publish the chef he knows & subsequent restaurant recipe's(which then wouldnt be his) or take a bit more time with his ebook & market it elsewhere imo, too tough a crowd in here..trouble in the post. C2G was cast out from the beginning on cr0 & i can't remember too many reports about his dishes on here

Regards
ELW

Hi Frank/Martin, the difference is definitley linked to business model & location. Ta's or "kebab shops" are often situated near pubs, where the clientele, footfall & rates dictate the price, quality & general time and effort spent on food to turn a proft.I saw rolls of "Mystery Meat"  donner kebab rolls being delivered from a Mitchells self drive hire van with no fridge in Glasgow once. I wouldn't touch that stuff if you put a gun to my head
The Glasgow t/a's in my experience are often guilty of knocking out similar tasting  curries right across their menu, often cooked by Middle Eastern's rather than Asians.
Some Pakistani restaurants are also guilty of this, but the better known places would never survive. I would guess only that the all in method would be pretty popular in the ta's. Nobody is checking the tomato paste has caramelised correctly in Govan or Shettleston.

The quality restaurants here serve food that no recipe on here comes close to  ..almost an addictive like quality to it

Interesting thing about the Ashoka(im not sure if you have been in), is that their food tastes nothing like the other restaurants I use. I find its fairly unique interms of flavour, even in their buffet joints. It's a chain within an even larger group, but there has definitely been a formula created for Ashoka restaurants.
Like Martin, if my efforts  get there, then i'm happy either way-if i can cut some oil & salt along the way so much the better

Regards
ELW

Did he say why he never included the bhaji oil initially whandsy?

QuoteI don't know if this has been documented anywhere but I pm'ed BB1 when his recipes were 1st posted and the takeaway he works in uses reclaimed bhaji oil 

, in the base? in the dish??..I seldom see anyone with bhajis in glasgow, unless he meant pakora. "seasoned oil" is appearing in a few more vids these days i've noticed 

I found using half of the 5kg batch left this underspiced for a finished sauce, still greasy. A chefs spoonful of this base does fry tomato paste/GG/methi really well, why wouldn't it?
  The instruction was to stick with the oil, add no extra water. The amount of water evaporated or gained from the onions could obviously vary( i recently made 2kg onion CBM Little India base, using 150ml water initially & ended up with over 3ltr of base un doctored with water after blending, which i was surprised by)I think mine needed more water & less coconut(hardly any oil floating on top)

I  ended up with the Glasgow base which was almost identical in taste & texture to the Ashoka version, minus some extra water for thinning it out. For anyone who has not made it, Ashoka is nowhere near a finished sauce, as it gets alot of its spice content from the onion paste. So  a basic curry following the Glasgow recipe was way underspiced as there's a pretty standard amount in a 2.5kg base, with no more to be added at dish stage. I don't yet know what effect on taste will be by upscaling the spice in the 5kg version

Thats when i looked at a few other bases i had made to firstly try & find a balance with water & oil, hopefully to make this technique work, before the thread went all Asperger style again, sums included

To say this bir method whatever anyone thinks of it, is strange, unusual, wrong, is neither here nor there unless you have broad kitchen experience, have experience of varying bir business models(i have none of both so could never make a comment like that  :)Corner cutting/lazy/astute - possibly
If it didn't cook curries "properly" ...no one would buy it....if the Asian chefs don't care much for scientific knowledge of ingredients then i sure don't...i'm trying to copy them

I'll do a 5kg next time tinkering a little before making my mind up

@martinwhynot - posting the 25kg recipe would be great. It would let me see if less is more regarding spices as the base scales up

Regards

ELW

QuoteThat's significantly diluted, so much so that 1.5L of oil per 13L of water means you're getting far less oil per portion than the Glasgow base, regardless of the fact that CA's contains more oil.

Agreed they are two different bases

1ltr 5kg onion -2 litres water-could vary


7kg original should have been 1.5ltre oil rather than 2ltr -ca base 7kg would be around 1.5 also

QuoteGlasgow base: 7kg of onions to 2L of oil.

obsolete recipe by the original poster, should have been 1.5 ltrs...my point is the revised 5kg version, of which i made exactly half batch, comes in less in oil content than ca's(if you made a 5kg..it may never have been designed for that) & was still greasy...it may not be the oil at all...i've had exactly same problems with Ashoka base(very similar)& i've never found ca base greasy

Quotean onion puree or garlic/ginger paste in hot oil

Thats exactly what you'll be doing if you decide to make this curry base 

I had plenty oil coming out on the plate ss, but it was almost folding over like a cloth in the pan. The chilli & methi fried away in the initial chefs spoon i added, not a ladle.I'm putting that down to my own version. With a bit of tinkering i think it has potential to create something closer to what i'm used to