Quote from: Mark J on May 18, 2005, 11:40 PM
OK, I chatted to the guy again tonight and have his recipe for making up his standard sized pot of base sauce
He was at great pains to be wary of adding too much chilli, salt and garam masala. Too much of any of these will ruin the base and are irreversible.

Now what I find particularly interesting is the use of garam masala
This spice mix has black cardamom in
That is the spice I felt was missing from the Kris Dhillon recipe.
When chatting to chefs, about a missing "taste", black cardamom was mentioned twice.
Perhaps it is considered as the most important spice for the base
In isolation it has a foul smell, almost medicinal
But the curry gravy I froze, leaving them in, had this warm flavour when thawed out.
Nothing like it's original character
If you sifted out the pods they were the source
Totally changed
If left in, for any length of time, you really don't need much
If the curry houses are keeping their base for three days, then this spice's effect would really evolve

Loose leaves straight from the box

Quote from: Ader1 on November 13, 2005, 04:04 PM
Hi Pete...

Hope this isn't a stupid question but when you mention dried fenugreek I suppose you mean the leaves as opposed to seeds in onther words....Methi?

Sorry, I meant the dried leaves

I've never seen it cooked
But the recipes, I know, all deep fry

I have found the last ingredient to improve Kris Dhillon's curry gravy
It is black cardamom
You don't need much
These spices are very strong and if you freeze the curry base, with them in, the flavour almost overpowers it.
I still have some of my sample curry base, from a takeaway.
There is no difference between that and what I can make at home.
So to recap.
I make KD's base, as per recipe
But I add a stick of celery and a small bit of lemon (with the peel) at the first boil
Then, when you fry the paprika, tomato and turmeric, I use extra oil and 1 black cardamom
When you add the pureed onion to the oil I add
1 tablespoon of vegetable ghee
A small amount of thyme
1 teaspoon of dried fenugreek
I also boil it for an hour (which is longer than recommended)
I bet if you searched around this site you could find a recipe very similar to this anyway.
One of the problems, I have had, is knowing when you have got something right
This is definitely the same, as the base, used at one of my local takeaways
I still cant post pictures here I get this warning

The attachments upload directory is not writable. Your attachment or avatar cannot be saved.

So I've posted it here

http://img375.imageshack.us/my.php?image=blackcardamoms4pz.jpg

I've lost count of the number of times this has been reported
But it's alot
I think we can take this practice as almost standard, though no chef would admit it.

I've made paneer before
I used a clean "non furry" tea towel to strain it
You've got to put a really heavy weight on it afterwards too
I deep fried mine before cooking in a curry
I liked it
Is it the Kris Dhillon recipe you are doing?

Hi Spellbound
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Always great to see curry shots!

Quote from: spellbound on November 10, 2005, 04:00 PM
Tried to post as you suggested but I got the following message:

The attachments upload directory is not writable. Your attachment or avatar cannot be saved.

Hi SB
        That's the same warning I get every time now
I post mine at
http://www.imageshack.us/
Curry King told me about this (thanks CK)
You browse to locate your file, then click "host it"
The file uploads
You can then view it, copy the address in your browser
Then post that address on the cr0 site
It sounds complicated, but it's not

The curry base I was shown at Bengal Cuisine has  condensed milk in too

Onion Gravy

Ingredients:-

2 large onions sliced
1 green pepper sliced
1 medium potato sliced
3 tablespoons Garlic ginger puree
1 carrot unpeeled chopped
1 cup of vegetable oil
? cup vegetable ghee
1 desertspoon salt
2 desertspoon turmeric
2 desertspoon of Pataks Kashmiri Masala
2 green chillies chopped
2 whole tomatoes from a can
Water equal to half the volume of the above
i.e. if the above comes to half way up the pot, then add a quarter of a pot of water

Boil the above for only ten minutes.
This is until you can see the sliced onion wilting
Now add:-

2 desertspoons of curry powder (rajah)
2 desertspoons of ground almonds
2 desertspoons of coconut powder
2 tablespoons of condensed milk

Cook another five minutes and then blend
The mixture is bright yellow
Add enough hot water to make it very runny
About half it?s volume again
This doesn?t look like your finished oily curry gravy but I was told with more oil, and longer cooking, it would.
As far as the chef was concerned, we had what we wanted.

Full post at
https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=118.0