Smokenspices

In one of your paragraphs above.....

There's no such thing as a "saturated trans fatty acid", if the lipid is fully saturated there are (by diffinition) no carbon to carbon double bonds, without these no 'cis' or 'trans' isomers can exist!

I've read that there are also other factors that should be taken into consideration with regard to the relative benefits/detriments to health of various types of lipid; such as what happens when they are heated.

Irrespective of how healthy these lipds are 'cold', in general (very simplistic so appologies!) worst = saturated, better = polyunsaturated, best = monounsaturated; I understand it is not generally understood how heating effects this....

Poly unsaturated oils (e.g. sunflower) become quite nasty if they've be heated up to smoking temp, some say worse than the most unhealthy saturated fats!  I have read that oils containing high proportions of mono unsaturated oild (e.g. groundnut), in addition to being relatively healthy 'cold', suffer fewer detrimental effects with heating.  To this end I use groundnut oil exclusively for BIR and Chinese cooking, and another largely  'mono' oil: olive oil (not good in a curry), for all my Italian style stuff.

Because I'm a curry-nut, I consume quite a lot of oil, like many here I believe it's not possible to get the 'taste' without it, and however much I try to skim off after cooking, I'm sure loads gets eaten. 

So people, if anyone thinks I've got hold of the wrong end of the stick 'health-wise', with my oil choice; please let me know!!

I do use butter in my cooking, it's not possible to make a good Chicken Pollo (Italian) without adding some to the olive oil, but I try to keep it down.

Enjoyed a very good Sunday Curry Buffet last weekend, well worth a visit!

Years ago I watched the chef make a take-away for me here, when it was a much smaller establishment that just did take-aways. It was known as the 'gatwick tandoori' back then.

I got another tour of the kitchens this time, and spoke to the same chef, who now has a kitchen staff of about 5 to help him. I saw 3 big pots of base on the stove, and I told him how I made my version, like he cared!!

He showed me a large metal box, partitioned into sections containing his whole-spices.  I was suprised to be told one of them was BLACK cumin, this I knew already was a different spice to normal (white?) cumin, it's more expensive and has a slight anise-like note.

Anywhy, this place is worth a visit!

Pork's lovely, you just have to do the right thing with it.  Now i love curry, don't get me wrong, in fact I'm going to have one of my home made BIR Madras tonight.

Pork would make a great curry, or you could just do this:-

-Coat in flour
-Heat a frying pan with about  3/4 tbs of olive oil (don't skimp on this or it won't work!)
-When hot and mobile add a small know of butter
-Add your pork loins and fry few mins on each side 'till brown
-add a glass of white wine and cook for couple of mins to drive off alcohol
-cover and cook on low heat for about 15 mins
-uncover turn up heatreduce sauce till about 1/3 rd original volume-add another knob of butter (this puts a 'glaze' to the sauce, don't skimp on this either or it won't work-season and serve!

FANTASTIC!

Sorry moderators but this would be, in my humble opinion, the best way to treat a loin or chop of pork unless you want to make a traditional (that is non-BIR) vindaloo.

I have seen Worchester sauce used in a BIR, at the Gatwick Tandorri take away about 15 years ago, it's now called the Zari, in Ifield, Crawley, West Sussex.

See my other posts.  Basicaly during a demo the Chef gave me of how he cooked the Madras curry I liked so much from that Curry House!

Ouch, sorry everyone, I really must take the time to type more slowly and check my post properly before pushing 'send'!  Oh, and using spell check would help!

Interesting thread this one...

I always use home-made chicken stock in my base, stock cubes are rubbish in my opinion and just don't produce a good flavour.  I make  a stock with the left over carcass of a roast chicken, containing peepercorns, (a little) star anise, bay and cloves.  I would normally add onion, pepper and celery but there is little point if those ingredients are going in the base also.

I always add a stick of celery, and I think it makes a difference.  I also add some carrot and green pepper, but I made bases that are just as good without them.

I agree completely with the remark that currytester made about never getting good results with 'off the shelf' garam massala, I don't it in everything, but I do think home-made is much better.

I used to belive firmly in the importance of pre-frying, however now I'm not so sure!  having tried making base without initially frying the garlic/ginger/tomarto first, and it seemed ok.  Also I wongder if if is evfen necessary to fry the spices, provided oil/ghee (or some other lipid!) is present to extract the flavour.  In some base recipies here the spice is simply added to the base with the oil, at leat that way the temp can't climb above 100c and the spices won't burn!

I use amethod that is a bit of a distillation of many on here.  Boil; chopped onion/celery/pepper/carrot and stock, then after an hour or so fry garlic/ginger paste a few minutes in oil, add blitzed tinned toms, fry another few mins, add spice mix fry a minute, and then add  the fryed mix to the reast of the base, bltz the lot, cook and skim for 20 mins or so.

I think currytester is right in his opinion that if the base tastes like a good (albeit slighty spicy) soup in its own right then it can be the basis of a good curry.  I still believe the success of the final finished dish is more down to the on the ingredients and techniques used in the final stages, and this is far more important than minor differences between base recipies!

What's alcohol got to do with the fat/oil content of curry???

What's your favorite base recipe BB?

I'd be very interested to fine out more about this 'neutralization', do you mave any references for this SS?

I'd also assumed that maybe the salt just masked the bitterness, I don't disbelieve you but I'd like to find out more!

Assuming that any bittereness might be caused by the same irritant chemical (or perhaps its precurser) that causes tears when fresh onions are chopped up (and it may not be).  I'd have thought that this chemical was either distroyed by the heat of the cooking process, or volatilizes during cooking.  It is presumably a fairly volatile substance anyway, since it it reaches the eyes so fast!

Much of the stuff I've read on this thread had suggested to me that bitterenss may have resulted from insufficient cooking time, or perhaps that simmering too gentley with the lid on had not allowed these compounds to evaporate off.

One other 'variable' I've tried is how finely I slice the onions before cooking.  I immagine damage to the onion either releases the irritant or activates an enzyme that causes its formation from a precurser.  It could work either of two ways:  course chopping could result in more irritant or precurser remaining in the onion, before cooking.  Fine chopping could be said to increse the release of (or generation of) more of the irritant and thus 'use-up' some of its precurser before cooking.  It all rather depends on what causes the bitterness.  Is it the irritant sulphur-containing organic compound released by chopping?  Is it the precurser to this compound (if there is one) contained in the 'unchopped' onion?  Or maybe it's something else entirely! 

What I can say is, in my opinion, it makes absolutely no difference to the result how finely chopped the onion is before cooking!

What I might try next time, is to boil by base in a wider pan, which would expose a greater surface area of boiling liquid to the air, perhaps this could get rid of these volatile irritants more effectively by providing a greater area for their evaporation. Assumimg, of course, that bitterenss has anything to do with this in the first place!

Anyway, enough rambling; I'm very interested to find out more about this salt business!

Up 'till very recently I was using schartz chillie powder to make my 'madras-style' curry. However on reading the list of ingredients I was suprised to see that it contained cumin!

'Hang on just a mo' I thought, if i wanted extra cumin I'd add more myself,  This got me thinking, and I looked at the list of ingredients of another 'make' of chilliie in my cupboard, that one had oregano in it!

Looking for purer alternatives I happened upon shwartz cayenne.  Now normally I use a whole sachet of shwartz (normal) chillie, there are 2 satchets per box and each satchet is about 2 level tbs (2 X 15 ml.).  That amount makes a hotish, but by no means too hot curry.  Being cautious I decided to be less generous with the cayenne, and just use one third the quantity ( 2 X lev tps / 2 X 5 ml).  My wife found the result so hot she couldn't eat it.  I like hot curry so I was O.K  Although my enjoyment was slighty dulled by thye sight of my misses scowling at me from across the table, distractly regarding a piece of toast she was holding like she was considering shoving it somewhere the sun 'don't shine'!

Anyway, the point of this ramble is this:  the cayenne was A LOT hotter, but also seemed to introduce a lovely sweet flavour, much more 'BIRish' than my normal effort.  So I'll continue to use it, but just cut down on the quantity in future in the interest of avoiding divorce, and having to put the bog-roll in the fridge!

In any case I can't see the point of chillie that contains other things (cumin and oregano for instance).  I rather suspect the less hot chillie powders are either made from 'weaker' chillies of are diluted with paprika!

I have not tried the chillie in larger quantity bags from asian shops recently though, may give that I try next!