Quote from: PACMAN on February 28, 2005, 05:36 PM
one to miss if you are trying to achieve a fresh restaurant taste

If you say it's nothing like their fresh restaurant taste, or anyone else's, I believe you. And I'm not surprised. Trading Standards rules should be robust enough to get all the restaurant taste claims removed from their web site and the pots of sauce. It's as fraudulent as selling painted iron as gold. Claiming that taste is subjective should not be a good enough excuse, if any reasonable person can tell an immediate and significant difference. It's a shame these crooks will probably make quite lot of money with their scam.

Quote from: PACMAN on February 24, 2005, 04:16 PM...I cut down on the salt though as I don't like salty food and I thought 2 teaspoons in total looked rather a lot.

With the greatest respect, it seems highly plausible that the restaurants use at least this much salt - our health isn't their greatest concern, any more than all the salt in supermarket foods, starting with bread and butter.

So, by reducing the salt you may never achieve your presumed goal of matching take-away curries. Better to leave it in for test and research purposes, and then modify the recipe later for everyday use. Just add back all the salt when your friends come round for dinner!

Also, if you are (rightly) concerned about all the salt - and ultra high levels of fat, actually - will you never again eat in an Indian restaurant or get a take-away?

I'm a newbie here and perhaps this is a dumb question BUT what is it the 'closest one' to? i.e. given that the basic curry sauce is only work-in-progress within a UK indian restaurant/take-away. You can't order a portion of basic curry sauce, can you? And be sure they haven't added anything. Pure samples would be useful in order to have a reference point to aim at. Better still, get half a dozen samples from as many take-aways, in order to assess consistency, and have even more to go on.

Moving on to the next stage of cooking, whether it be Chicken Korma (one of my favorites) or any final dish, surely adds a whole load more uncertainty as to whether 'stage 1' - the basic sauce is as good as my suggested sample of six professionally made sauces.

Regards
George

Quote from: pete on February 22, 2005, 01:09 PM
They don't seem to understand what you want to do

Pete

I'm note sure we should let on what we want to do. Perhaps its better to avoid telling them that for years we've been searching for the holy grail, after their trade secrets. I don't mean to open restaurants in competition or anything, but just to do more cooking at home with less need to buy take-aways from them.

Regards
George

Many thanks for pointing out this golden opportunity. I hope to go myself. On their web site, they say it's a group lesson. Was there a kitchen full of visitors at the time of your visit?

Also, how certain are you that the methods shown are the ones used to produce their in-house curries, rather than other recipes or modifications which they may be more inclined to divulge?

Regards
George