I'm sorry to be so pedantic but I really do fear that using different quantities could threaten my attempt to match your great outcome.

By 'slightly heaped' do you mean just a bit above level, rounded or a tad more than rounded which I would say is 'slightly heaped' but not 'standard heaped' or 'massively heaped' like when one is stacking up a Pizza Hut salad bowl.

Regards
George

DeeDee

My understanding is that USA and other cup measures are different. I would encourage anyone posting any recipes to state 'assumptions' like cup type and whether spoon-measures are level (not that cups are often used as a measure in the UK). And to give onions and other vegetables in grams, since the size of vegetables can vary so much.

Regards
George

Quote from: George on December 18, 2005, 10:51 PM
...now that the recipe has been clarified and outstanding points like 'bags' have been explained.

Darth

I don't believe it...I found your definition of 'bags' somewhere and now I've lost/forgotten it again. Was it half a litre, so 3 bags of base gravy would be 1.5 litres? I've never heard of such a unit of measure before! Also, are all your spoons LEVEL spoons unless othwerwise stated, as would be normal convention?

Regards
George

Quote from: DARTHPHALL on December 18, 2005, 07:30 PM
See this post for an excellent rice to accompany this Curry.
https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=498.0

I'll vouch for that! When I made Darth's rice, it was and remains the best pilau rice I've made so far - just like a BIR. That's why I'm so keen to try his base and curry, which I will now that the recipe has been clarified and outstanding points like 'bags' have been explained.

Regards
George

Quote from: raygraham on December 16, 2005, 05:40 AM
I now realise he was not necessarily giving the restaurant secret away as base sauce was never mentioned.

Good point. The chef might not want to mention base sauce, and the TV producers might not be too keen either, if the aim is home cooking. But I suggest it would be quite easy for a chef (and us) to 'reverse engineer' a BIR curry and turn it into a more traditionally cooked dish and maintain a similar flavour, e.g. simmered in an oven for 40 mins and started with finely chopped onion, rather than base sauce.

And the other way, too. e.g. re-jig an authentic recipe so it can be speeded up with the use of base sauce.

All the ingredients would remain the same. It's just the method which would be adapted.

Regards
George

Quote from: asafoetida on December 17, 2005, 06:20 PM
I must say I'd be fairly offended if my guests asked me 'which takeaway is this from'!

I'd be delighted if it was a BIR style dish I was trying to emulate. If such a comment is honest, it must surely be the ultimate accolade or seal of approval.

That said, I still reckon authentic Indian food (made at home or eaten out) is miles better and finer than any BIR. But that's not the point, in my opinion. I still like BIR food for what it is and I thought BIR food is what this forum is mostly about.

Regards
George

Quote from: DARTHPHALL on December 18, 2005, 12:03 PM
Yes George i will. I will start a new thread with just recipes & methods. The base incidentally is always the same & you will be glad to hear it is surprisingly simple, its just that there are a lot of different ingredients but the method is straightforward. I will hopefully do this today.

Many thanks but absolutely no hurry, even if it's not until after Xmas, if you have more urgent things to do. You are so enthusiastic about those recipes that I really must try them. The Maharaja restaurant you compare them with looks very good as well, so it all sounds very encouraging.

Regards
George

Quote from: DARTHPHALL on December 18, 2005, 08:57 AM
Try this   https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=465.0
You will not be disappointed mate, it looks complicated but the first stage is just chop all the ingredients, put together in one large Pot or two average Pots/Pans then cook for a while. Second stage is very quick.

Darth

I've been meaning to try your above recipe for ages but I'm never sure I'll have taken into account all the changes and modifications (even if I read them correctly) over the long course of that thread, let alone comments on the same recipe which may have been made in other threads.. Would it be possible to update the Vindaloo recipe to the latest version, please, and create another clear, separate, modified recipe for the Madras variant? I'm so grateful to you for writing up the recipe(s) but I need to be confident I'm reading them right, before investing in all the ingredients.

Regards
George

Quote from: Mark J on December 17, 2005, 09:47 AM
I did this just for a laugh (and after a few cobras down the local) and tend to agree with the comments posted  ;D

I'll be pleased to delete my message (tomorrow). If everybody else does the same, then this thread could be quietly forgotten, before there's any risk it might bring the forum into disrepute.

Regards
George

YF

You were the one person I hoped this thread might help, as I know you share at least some of my enthusiasm for 'cracking' both elements of this dish.

I said I wasn't very impressed with the overall taste of the biryani in the photo. I couldn't help thinking it should be quite easy to surpass that at home, given tips picked up here at this forum.

>did you see him put any base sauce into the Biryani rice and if so how much?
I'm sorry I didn't, but I'm sure he used base sauce. He must have done. But it wasn't added to the rice. Rather, the rice was added to the base sauce, after lots of other ingredients had been added first. I'm sure it starts off like making a basic 'stage 2' curry. This special 'curry sauce', complete with chicken, took at least five minutes to make. Then, at the very end, the rice was tipped in and heated through.

My attempt at a chicken biryani will be to make one of the chicken madras curries like on this site, but with minimal chilli. Then tip in some rice. Just add rice gradually until the consistency of the overall biryani seems about right, i.e. not too moist.

>Also I've tried the pre-cooked vegetable method from the Kushi balti book
>and I felt that this was not far from the veg curry that is served with most biryanis.
This is very good news. I share the view that the techniques in the Kushi Balti book are probably of more use than the Kushi spicing. I will try substituting what I think is a correct (minimal) quantity of Rajah or some other curry powder and leave out most of the Kushi spice suggestions. For a start, I don't want a 'Balti' flavour!

Regards
George