Quote from: Yellow Fingers on April 13, 2005, 05:58 PMI don't believe anyone has seen the whole base sauce preparation actually done in a real restaurant. But if anyone has please speak up!

I'd go further...assuming the chef is not a magician, you'd need to be sure:
- all the ingredients were pure, e.g. m.s.g. not added in with sugar or something before you arrived for the demo,
- that the chef didn't leave out something like chicken jelly while you were there, only to add it the moment you were gone, and
- the actual batch of sauce you saw made from raw ingredients was used in a few dozen curries served or handed over to customers while you were there, including a test sample of a finished curry for you to eat, which you could verify was spot on for 'that taste'.

Quote from: pete on April 13, 2005, 12:50 PM

Quote from: George on April 13, 2005, 10:52 AM
Doesn't anyone have a firm idea what leads to 'that smell'? One certainly does not produce a smell anything like that when making traditional (English) chicken soup, also by boiling a chicken.
Regards
George

I believe that smell to be the meat and chicken being cooked for later use.

You may be right, but I'd be amazed. I asssumed it was spices but I could be wrong. Perhaps the smell comes from spices in with the meat and chicken? Could everyone else please enter this debate. What do you think causes 'that smell' from curry houses on the high street? On another forum, at least one person suggested fenugreek. Do you ever get 'that smell' from your own kitchen?

The reason I'm interested in the smell, is hopefully to help lead us to the taste.

My gut feel is that, whilst chicken stock my be a very useful ingredient, it is probably not the X factor which leads to 'that taste'. I repeat again, there is a link in my mind between the smell wafting down the street from curry houses, and 'that taste' in the dishes you eat. Doesn't anyone have a firm idea what leads to 'that smell'? One certainly does not produce a smell anything like that when making traditional (English) chicken soup, also by boiling a chicken.

The two main vegetable dishes which I eat in BIR's are the mixed vegetable curry which always comes with chicken biryani, and also sag aloo. Both these vegetable dishes have 'that taste'.

Regards
George

Quote from: DARTHPHALL on April 12, 2005, 07:52 AM
...the general consensus is that we can all copy the Korma & Tikka Masala etc..& that we can make them better than our local take-away...

I wish I could say the same. Chicken Korma is the main dish I have been trying to copy for 20 years, not that I've tried more than half a dozen times. I can get the texture but not the BIR flavour. Some ideas brought up on this site may lead to greater success next time I try, e.g. the use of evaporated milk.

Can you point to favourite recipes for BIR style Korma and CTM? Not better than BIR, but the same as BIR!

Ghanna kindly supplied a recipe for Chicken Korma which looks like it has the (fine dining type) potential to be miles better than BIR. I'd treasure such a recipe but would still search for a classic BIR style chicken korma recipe. David Smith published a recipe at curryhouse.co.uk which he said was spot on but I didn't think so. Not quite.

I have two concerns here:

1. Leaving the basic sauce out overnight and for several days without refrigeration in a hot kitchen, which never concerned me until I heard it may well contain chicken. That said, touch wood, I have never been poorly after  eating at any UK Indian restaurant.

2. Misleading our vegetarian friends.

Quote from: joe2 on April 09, 2005, 08:41 PM
If we all decide that this is the secret of the TASTE, I thnk we all had better be carefull what we say regarding all BIR's using this method.  It could have very serious consequences, maybe even reaching newspapers etc.

It's quite a thought. This forum and our friend attributed with first reporting the chicken stock approach could become quite publicised. Trading Standards and their health people might insist on a change of approach in almost every BIR. Say two large pots in future - one for vegetable dishes and one for everything else. Either that, or there could be a dramatic drop in demand if a lot of vegetarians started staying away from BIRs.

Ghanna

Many thanks indeed for reporting your latest discovery. You come up with some real gems, although I can't say I've ever noticed anything particularly off-putting myself about the smell of fresh or frozen chicken, when cooking.

Regards
George

I'll be pleased to meet up there, if only to put faces to screen names, have a good nosh and an interesting chat.

But I think it really is a long shot in terms of any place being prepared to truly spill the beans.

It's like if the Iraqis had openly discussed their invasion plans for Kuwait in 1990 on a forum like this, then e-mailed some Kuwaitis to ask if they would help them get in, whereupon the Kuwaitis would have read the forum, and run a mile!

This sounds like a very common practice for making chicken stock, e.g. for western cooking, albeit with different herbs and spices. I also expect that 'fine dining' (proper) Indian restaurants would use chicken stock when making certain 'up-market' curries but I'm surprised to hear that curry houses would add chicken stock to a base sauce which would be used to make 'vegetarian' dishes, not that I have much time for vegetarian attitudes.

'Proper' chicken stock has an infinitely better flavour to stock cubes. The latter might give an idea of potential, but I'd stick with the real thing if that's how some curry houses might do it.

Overall, it wouldn't surprise me if this is one of the 'secrets'.

Quote from: Curry King on April 06, 2005, 02:24 PM
I can tell you now I wasn't lied to, for one the guy that showed me doesn't even work in an indian restaurant anymore...

Curry King

I must say this does sound pretty genuine. You are very lucky to have such a contact. Perhaps, as others have suggested, these guys don't even know the 'secret' (if there is one) themselves! But one would hope that when he tasted the (presumably inadequate) curry which he made round your house, he would have expressed disappointment and, moreover, been able to pin point what went wrong. Or did his ex restaurant owner or head chef bring in a secret blend of spices so he never knew the full strory?

I would have expected the people down Brick Lane to have expressed disappointment as well, if it was 100% genuine - to have acknowledged that the end result lacked 'that taste' and to know and explain exactly why.

Your point about restaurant volumes might be right as well, but only if it is to do with re-using pints and pints of oil. This would indeed be hard to replicate at home. But if we can prove it's that, there might be a work around, to synthesise the effect of used oil skimmed off lots of different curries, e.g. a pinch each of various pastes and spices, a real hotch-potch.

Regards
George