Quote from: George on March 15, 2014, 01:05 PM

Quote from: Ader1 on March 15, 2014, 11:31 AM
I will try this but I won't be adding so much butter. 

It won't be this recipe you're trying then, will it? Before you order ANY dish in a BIR, do you ask for a run down of ingredients and quantities so you can ask them to cut back on any ingredient you don't think you'd like? I'm not trying to be funny or rude, but it must be the logical extension of your comment.

Also, how many staff curries have you tried and were they cooked by you or eaten in a BIR? If served by a BIR, did you ask them to cut back on any ingredients?

You are correct.  It won't be exactly the same.  I only want to cut back on the butter for health reasons.  I dodn't want to make a big issue out of it.

I've tried a number of staff curries; chicken, lamb and fish.  I did have a go at cooking a couple myself and not I didn't hask them to cut back on any ingredients.  However, when I cook them at home, I dont' add quite as much salt of chilli powder.  Again, for health reasons and some family members can't take a very hot curry.

I will try this but I won't be adding so much butter.  In my opinion, Staff curries knock the spots off BIR curries.

Does anybody have a good recipe for mixed poweder which restaurants put into so many of their dishes?  I'm specifically want one for making a staff type curry.  I saw that Happy Chris mentioned that he will give a recipe at some point.  He talks of it when he's making a staff curry.  I did make a staff type curry a week or so ago using a sharwood's curry powder I think, but it wasn't quite up to the mark.  Incidentally, is mixed powder basically what we might call a 'curry powder'?  Thanks.

Where I helped out they were using leg of lamb.  It was cut along the lines of the different muscles.  I watched it a couple of times.  Some pieces were used for making lam tandoori and others were dieced.  The leg bones was then smashed using the blunt side of a knife.  There was still some meat joined to the joint.  This was then bagged until I suppose they had enough pieces of bone with meat attached and was used to make a delicious staff curry.

Thanks for those links curryhell.  Does anybody have a good recipe for mixed powder which they use for these staff curries and many others too.  I was just told that it was a 'secret' mix.  I've given up on working out in this restaurant.  The owner wasn't helpful.  I'm quite disappointed by it all.

Thanks Dalpuri.  I just went along with what the restaurant wife suggested to me ie to try mackrel as it was nice with mackrel.  Maybe she whould have said that "I think it would be nice with mackrel but I haven't a clue".  I'm sure she said that she had tried it in their curry.  But the chef then came back and said it hadn't really worked but would be better in a kind of fish chutney.  I do sometimes get quite frustrated by being told one thing by one of them and another by somebody else there.  I read somewhere that in some countries in Asia, people will give an answer even if they don't know to try and save face or something similar.   Maybe there's something like that at play here?  And then there's also the added communication problem with their lack of vocabulary and basic sentences when speaking English.  But it's an interesting experience on the whole.

I was watching a guy making some yesterday and he added Tandoori Paste and Tikka Paste but no Kashmiri Paste.  He added to Kashmiri Paste to his Keema (minced meat) for making Keema rice etc and to his mixture making Chicken Tikka.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohu

Rohu or Rui in Bengali.

According to that link it's a member of the Carp family.  What's Carp like?  Expensive?

I asked the chef again what it's called and he said that in Bangladesh they call it 'rooi'.  That's the best I can do phonetically with the 'i' at the end sounding like 'e' in 'email'.  I cleaned one of it's scales and boy were they tough.  There's also another fish which they sometimes buy but it's twice the price and nicer so he says.  Thanks for your replies.  I'll make a not of your suggestions and see what's available at the local shops.  Has anybody here made a 'Staff fish curry'?

I've mentioned before that I've been helping out a little in a local Indian restaurant.  They eat what is known as the 'Staff Curry' at the end of the night but also, in the afternoon they eat another 'Staff Curry' which is fish based while the one at the end of the night is either chicken or lamb.  They use this fish which doesn't have an over-powering taste but it's riddled with small bones.  I've never come across such a fish with so many bones.  They claim it's comes from Bangladesh.  I've been told the name but I've forgotten.  Anyway, I asked the owner's wife if the same curry could be made using a fish from the UK's shores or at least more locak than Asia.  She said that mackrel works.  I bought a couple of mackrel and took them in and the chef cooked them.  Personally, I don't think the mackrel worked as well and were a little overpowering.  The chef also said that unlike their fish, he didn't fry the mackrel because they were too brittle to be fried and then added to the curry.  He did say though that they would work fine in a kind of spicy fish chutney which I've seen him make before.

My question here is, since I'm not very well up on my fish, what kind of fish do you people think might work?  Hopefully somthing which maybe cut into stakes and fried before adding to a curry and which wouldn't be brittle and break up and also not too over-powering in taste.  It would be an added bonus if the fish wasn't too expensive.  Thank you.