Quote from: blade1212 on May 30, 2005, 05:07 PM
George, It would be interesting to see if you could make a non-milk version to see how close that comes out (eg Bhunna, madras etc)

In terms of further assessing the MarkJ base sauce, I may not be the best person, since I seldom eat Bhunna, Madras, etc and am, therefore, not familiar with the BIR taste of those dishes. The only 'non-milk' dishes I could consider would be the vegetable curry side dish which normally comes with a chicken biriani, or chicken dansak. I think the vegetable curry is my best bet and I can't wait to try.

After around 20 years of trying (about 10 times over that period) I have finally succeeded in producing a chicken korma which is as identical as I can tell, to many chicken kormas I have had in BIRs. I owe great thanks to at least three people: (a) Jedi Spice Man and anyone else behind setting up this brilliant forum. Without it, I would probably never have heard from (b) Ghanna who provided an invaluable input of key ingredients such as evaporated milk, and (c) MarkJ who obtained the first class recipe I used for my base sauce. The recipes from Ghanna and MarkJ are already documented here. All I did was bring them together.

The successful attempt followed Ghanna's tip of not adding any spices, apart from those already in the base sauce. I may try adding some spices later, like some restaurants almost certainly do. After all, not all their chicken kormas are indentical, from place to place. But they all have a familiar taste, which is already present in my first attempt.

Regards
George

And here is the recipe (added by CA on behalf of George):

Here's a reprint of a recent post of mine on another korma thread:

This is a quick paste of Ghanna's recipe (which had no specific quantities or base sauce type) together with the quantities which I used, very successfully:

"It is one of the quickest curries to make in the restaurant kitchen" said Ghanna....
Ingredients :
Curry gravy ? 0.5 pints of MarkJ base sauce
Evaporated milk ? 85g, yes by weight
Creamed coconut ? 50g, again by weight
Any kind of nuts ( some use cashwnut ,some use Almonds, Some use a kind of nut similar to hazelnut ) ? use 0.5 oz almonds plus 0.5 oz raw cashew nuts (both unsalted). Grind to a powder.
Pre-cooked chicken, meat, prawns, or defrosted vegetables.

Method :
Heat some oil from the top of the curry gravy. Leave the heat on high all the time
Add the curry gravy
Add creamed coconut
Add nuts
Add evaporated milk
Add pre-cooked ingredients
Boil until oil rises to the top
Sprinkle some coriander
Serve

Some add fenugreek leaves ,some don't.

Enjoy
Thanks
ghanna
(with quantities and some other suggestions, like the great MarkJ base sauce, added by George)


Further comments by George:
- Ghanna reckoned evaporated milk tasted much more like a good BIR than cream. I agree.
- if you use any other base sauce, you're on your own! The reason I say this is that the MarkJ base tastes almost like korma on its own. It's a great foundation for korma, and much more besides
- no spices are added. Yes, no spices. My attempts at adding spices have not yet led to any great improvement.
- I do however add salt and SUGAR to taste
- I'm not convinced that high heat is necessary or even desirable for this dish. I use a low-medium flame

This remains my favourite recipe for chicken korma.

Incidentally, is condensed milk = evaporated milk + sugar ?

Quote from: DARTHPHALL on May 29, 2005, 02:07 PM
you could have eaten the base as a curry itself it tasted that good (you were right Curry King!!  ).

I agree. It really is that good, even though the only real test is whether it makes equally good final BIR curries such as Chicken Korma, Lamb Rogon Josh, CTM, Biryani vegetable curry side dish, etc, etc.

Quote from: Ian S. on May 29, 2005, 12:09 PM
A very likely explanation is that my blender blades are worn out after three years of use! :  George, how smooth was your puree after 30 mins?

Ian - after 30 mins simmering my mix was still very chunky because it had lots of roughly chopped onions, carrots, etc in it. But after I put it through my Kenwood Chef liquidizer (not a food prcocessor) for about 2 mins, it was silky smooth.

The taste of my base sauce is much better than anything I made from a KD recipe.

Quote from: DARTHPHALL on May 28, 2005, 09:16 AM
I assumed Ghanna was female, sorry if i`m incorrect Ghanna were ever you are ;D ;D ;D ;D

This sounds awful, but I wasn't sure so I avoided writing 'his' or 'her' in my message. If only everyone would comple a few lines of their 'profile' section at this forum...

One Indian take away I went to used quite a lot of fresh tomatoes in a lamb rogon josh, added towards the end - but none of their food is very good - so perhaps it doesn't say much!

What have you seen with your own eyes?

I trust my own eyes more than I do what little I've been told by BIR chefs.

I mentioned that I want to try coconut flour in chicken korma (and CTM).This idea came after I saw large sacks of the stuff being taken off a lorry for delivery to an Indian restaurant.

I've also seen huge tins of bog-standard vegetable oil round the back of several places, and visible in some kitchens. It's cheap and makes sense, rather than their using much ghee in anything.

Green peppers are something else I've seen.

What have you seen?

Regards
George

Blondie

For two days I've been meaning to use my base sauce to make a BIR chicken korma.  Hopefully, I will get around to it today, and trust the base sauce may have improved (if anything) in the fridge, rather than gone downhill. If the base sauce has deteriorated, I will simply make another batch of base sauce. That recipe is so easy and straightforward because cooking time is short and nothing is likely to burn, so you don't need to stand over it all the time.

I even got as far as mixing creamed coconut into evaporated milk as suggested by Ghanna. Incidentally, where has Ghanna got to? Much missed. Anyway, creamed coconut will be in my first attempt at BIR chicken korma. I suspect that restaurants are more likely to use coconut flour so I'll try that next time. On the other hand, I'm not intersted in any old BIR chicken korma - I'd like to make it as good as the best I've had. Perhaps that means using coconut cream (more expensive) rather than coconut flour. I even read that some restaurants don't put coconut in chicken korma at all - only in CTM.

None of my comments relate to authentic Indian chicken kormas, only to BIR chicken kormas.

Regards
George

Update 29 May: I made my first recent attempt at a BIR chicken korma last night, with minimal spicing as suggested by Ghanna. It wasn't bad for a first attempt and was certainly 'in the frame' for a BIR chicken korma. But I feel the lack of additional spices made it the type which I am not so keen on, but which you do find at some BIR's. So I will experiment further, and when I have a recipe I am pleased with, I will report back.

Quote from: DARTHPHALL on May 26, 2005, 10:15 AM
One more thing i will be cooking the 30 onion recipe next week so wish me luck people(all that peeling I'm not looking forward to !!)

Good luck to you if this is what you really want to do. I suggest, however, that the "R&D payback" is likely to be a lot greater by cooking 15 batches of basic sauce, comprising two onions each, with 15 lots of variations.

I don't give him any credit, other than for a bit of background information. The books are highly deceptive. On the cover, they promise restaurant recipes. That's not what you find inside, for the most part. And the recipes which may actually come from real BIRs must have been butchered so they will not produce anywhere near the same result as the actual restaurant would. Can you imagine any BIR going through Chapman's complex array of separate purees and spice mixes, and an hour's cooking in the oven, when someone wants a curry in five minutes flat?