If you read my post "Muttley's sauce - And another curry sauce - rambling version" (and don't die of boredom), I make some comments on the most likely way BIR's make and treat their sauces.

Can't guarantee it's 100% accurate for all resturaunts, but something similar to what I described must be going on.

Thanks for the review, Mark.

It's always good to have an unbiased opinion.

The requirement for the unusual ingredients you mention is a bit of a worry. I've scoured Southall, and I don't remember ever seeing beetroot powder.

I find that these unusual ingredients are a royal pain with a lot of book/magazine recipes. The authors should, at the very least, mention how important the unusual ingredients are to the recipe, give a mail/internet source for them, and preferably, some alternative.

Let it boil for a little longer, and some oil will reappear on the surface.

Thanks Mark.

What cut of meat do you use whan cooking lamb by this method.

I don't want to end up with fatty cubes of meat, which fillet looks as if it would produce, but the alternative is the very expensive chops which seem to be the only lean lamb you can buy.

I don't usually cook with lamb, but do rogan josh occasionally. I've found if you brown the lamb, it renders some of the fat, but the lamb ends up much chewier than BIR lamb.

Quote from: Mark J on January 14, 2005, 10:37 PM
It was a good idea, trouble is this group is so few on the ground!

Give it time (like the basic sauce!)

Same here, but not, I must admit, all on the same day.

CK, are you prepared to join my quest to rid the world of chicken vindaloo?

Given the way BIR's work, I doubt that you'll find a recipe that comes close to what your local returant serves. Presumably, the chef decided to adapt a dish he knew to BIR methodology, and so what you had will be unique to that establshment. Out of interest, I did a google search, and found a lot of kalia recipes. Not one that I looked at had either fennel or lemon in it!

Quote from: Mark J on January 13, 2005, 01:03 PM
Checkout Pete's base sauce recipe, it uses 1 tin of tomatoes but with more onions.

It's certainly going to make a delicious sauce, but it's got a lot of flavours in it. I want something with the absolute minimum of flavouring - just what is needed to get that BIR style gravy.

QuoteI think adding tomato to the base sauce is right but maybe your ratio is too high on the tomato side.

The trouble with adding any tomato is that when you then add youghurt/cream, you will end up with something orange (even if pale), whereas several curries require something nearer to very light brown.

It's certainly correct for Madras/vindaloo, but I doubt it needs to be in the basic sauce - a little tomato puree when you make the disk will do. Of course, if you know that you're going to use all the sauce for the type of curry that needs tomato in, then it might as well go in the base.

QuoteWe have heard that quite a few chefs throw in the odd potato and carrot to a base sauce, I like the idea of a carrot or 2 as this will increase the sweetness and I am finding that my curries are not quite as sweet as my local Indian, while they are almost certainly just using sugar I would like to find a natural alternative? .

Carrots and potatoes both contain starch which will change with the long cooking. I may experiment with those. See comments about browning some of the onion in post above, for extra sweetness - might help.

Two experiments

The first experiment was to determine whether or not further cooking of a basic sauce would change the flavour.

I reserved some of the basic sauce I had already made, and which had been cooked for a total of 6 hours. I then simmered the remainder for a further two hours. After warming the reserved sauce to the same temperature as that whch had undergone the extended cooking, I compared the two. There really doesn't seem to be much difference at all. Certainly the colour and texture hadn't changed.

The second experiment was to attempt to determine what difference it would make if the onion was browned before it was boiled. I made a puree of onion, garlic and ginger, in the same proportions at the original sauce. I fried some turmeric and ground cumin for a couple of minutes. I then added the puree, turned the heat up, and stirred continuously until the mix was dark brown. At this point the mix tasted of nothing but caramalised onions - that flavour swamping all others. I added a little water and simmered this for two hours. At the end of that time I tasted the result, and found it hadn't been changed by the boiling.

Adding a samll quantity of this onion to the sauce made it a little sweeter, and gave it a fraction more depth.

The first conclusion I reached was that cooking for much more than 6 hours doesn't make much difference (although, people with more sensitive tastebuds may spot something).

The second concusion was that a certain amount of browning of the onions will add a little depth of flavour, and a little sweetness. This may or may not be required for the recipes you wish to make with the basic sauce. I think on the whole it would probably be better to brown some onion for the particular dish you are making, rather than have it present in the basic sauce, but it depends on what you want to tend to cook.