haldi,

Just looked at your pic of the paste. It seems too dark. It should be more reddish in colour.
Possibly too cooked. What tandoori masala did you use ie. brand.

Regard
Andy

Hi all,

Firstly thanks for all your emails. I have talked in length with owner and chefs and shown all of the emails i have received. They are happy to continue but would like to say that any comments good or bad re recipes are perfectly acceptable and will be responded to but personal comments wont be.
To me this site is there to enable people to construct indian food as they like to eat it from the takeaway or in the restaurant. Lets keep it that way.

Postings will continue as soon as.

Regards

Andy

hi

yf is on one again. Wish he could come and work with us for a reality check. I am here to try to help but like cp obviously some dont want that. I respect that others do but perhaps its not worth the effort. i have worked in here for ten years, yf has eaten for 25 years. Yawn yawn. Have suddenly lost interest. Some people dont want to know reality.

andy

Hi cory ander

What i mean re strange ingredients, not being specific to anyones recipes is purely the fact that some of the recipes include ingredients that in our bir just are not there. They are not there for a reason they change the taste.

Per example non of our curries e.g madras, vindaloo, bhuna etc have garam masala in them. Yes we put garam masala in the base sauce so why would you need it in both! It changes the colour of the finished product when added during the final process.

If you follow my future posts you will understand better.

I will be posting our curry masala mixes, balti mixes etc as soon as.

I appreciate a photo helps to get the look right and i will post pictures of as many of our menu items as i can. Please be patient we have to serve people quickly but i will take photos during quieter nights.

With the photo thing as well, i saw the other day a photo of someones base sauce and comments that it looked good. The colour was completely wrong. I was not going to be negative to the author by telling them this as this can put people off. However the positive comments regarding it could easily have sent people down the wrong garden path.

Regards

Andy

Hi all,


First of all i have reversed my normal subject headings so that it is easy to see the actual subject first but have kept my 10 years ,,,etc signature.

Peoples perception of the BIR taste.

There is so much talk on here regarding not being able to get the bir taste. Whether it be points relating to the curry base, technique, final spices and methods etc.

Let me explain.

Having had 10 years relating to this industry there is NO SECRET INGREDIENT that people sometimes think is missing. No-one can suddenly come up with a bir tasting curry. There is a lot of experience involved in this game. The waiter for example could not just nip into the kitchens and cook you up a chicken madras. After some training then yes he could.

The posts i have posted to date i.e. Base/sauce/gravy, Methods, pre-cooked paste are exactly as we do them, nothing added, nothing left out.

However where things change and where the taste will change drastically is the fact that we get a fast turnaround of spices so they are always at their freshest. As spices date they change their flavour therefore changing the flavour of all the dishes they are used for.
Spices must always be fresh.

I have seen recipes on here relating to garam masala and comments like Natco's is the best etc. We do not buy in garam masala we make it. I will give you details later.

The same applies to curry masala. We do not buy in Rajah gold Madras and all that kind of stuff, we make it.

We do not have a single bought curry paste on the premises.

Spices too can kill the taste by overuse. Per example too much cumin and you will end up with yes a curry, but with the taste of a commercial shop bought powder or paste. I have seen loads of variations on here of ingredients for various dishes. With no disrespect to anyone there are some strange ones. Spices react with each other and it is only experience that learns you the reaction of such.

Your local bir works on speed and reputation for good food. If one of our chef's was having to make up pastes for this and pastes for that he would never get any orders out.
I am not saying that all bir's do not use pastes but we certainly dont apart from the pre-cooked paste previously posted.

With one chef we can produce 2 curries every 5 minutes. That is experience and technique.

We get comments from customers that say "That vindaloo was a lot hotter than last week". We have not added more chilli it is just that a new batch may be of a better quality.

The taste is also dependent what you are used to. Bir's do not produce the same taste.
Example a chicken madras from leeds is totally different to a chicken madras in Newcatle both in taste and looks. It the chef's interpretation.

There is no standard curry base that is written down and secretly passed around all the bir's. I have seen photographs on here of peoples final dishes. Some look really good, some not so good  but you cannot get a taste from a photo. It is guide to what it should look like.

A good bir depends on experience.

Keep up the good work its challenging.

Regards

Andy

hi IanR,

In response to your question, we have no trouble getting fresh methi leaves but that does not help you. So i would suggest getting dried methi from a spice supplier and placing them in iced water for 15 minutes. This brings them back but just use 1/2 as much again.

Regards

Andy

mark j

yes in general terms the ratio is 1:2

regards
andy

cory ander.

Yes the peppers are used in most of the individual dishes. You will see how very soon when i post these recipes.

With regard to aromatic salt, we use it to infuse the oil and to reduce the smoke point temperature. Sunflower oil normally starts to smoke at 246 degrees C.

Regards
Andy

hi bart09

Pleased to did you all from instructions. I would like to see a photo of the base and the paste if possible to see if it looks like ours in the take-away.
Will be posting individual curry recipes this week

Regards
Andy

cory ander.

Hi i did reply to this one but it has gone. Here it is again.

Yes same size ladle and spoon.

Yes NO tomato puree or paste. See my pre-cooked paste post.

We use sunflower oil. It has a taste of its own.

When i say chopped onion and peppers etc, these are chopped extremely fine in a food chopper that has a 1mm blade. The result is very nearly pureed and breaks down in the cooking.

This is an experience thing. As msg is a flavour enhancer, we can tell when cooking the depth of flavour based on the aroma coming off. Adding msg does change the aroma.

Regards
Andy