Hi All,
I have just followed the recipe for Darthphal's 99.9% clone Curry Base and completed a Chicken Vindaloo as per instructions (well almost).
Here are my findings:-
The initial preparation of all the ingredients is the most time consuming thing and 15 Onions later my eyes were streaming so much I couldn't see! Next time I will cut them outside!
Once all the ingredients were prepared I was confused as to how much water/liquid to add to the cooking veg and spices at the start as it wasn't made too clear. I know this was a slight oversight and is being rectified meanwhile!
I added enough water to just cover the veg and in this recipe the volume of prepared ingredients is huge and will need a LARGE pot. I actually used a big cast iron wok which took everything.? Once cooking this volume reduces and becomes more manageable.
After the hour's cooking and cooling I blended the sauce which turned out the consistency of a thick condensed soup. I had ended up with about 4 litre's in volume! My first reaction to the taste was, "god that's hot"!!
Knowing Darth like's his curries hot is apparent by the first taste. For me this was quite enough "heat" so I decided not to add any more chillie powder at the next stage which calls for an additional 3 dessertspoons extra hot powder!!! Phew!!
Darth told me the sauce I had made was too thick and I had not added enough water at the start so I rectified this by adding more at this stage. This immediately brought the heat down to a better level for my taste and the sauce was then more the consistency of in Darth's words "cup of soup". I believe Darth gets about double the volume I had got so obviously I had not added enough water.
If anyone has made the bases from Bruce Edwards or Balti Kitchen it should be about the same consistency as this so we must be on the right track from that point of view.
What about the taste?
I am not very good at description's but I thought it was great, reminicent of others I had tasted, particularly Bruce Edwards but with an intensity in taste deeper and richer than Bruce's. More flavours and spices go in to it than many other recipes so I suppose it stands to reason more flavour and taste will come out of it!!
This initial base looked very promising and certainly does the author justice when he rates it highly like he does.
Next on to the actual Chicken Vindaloo recipe.
As I said I am not a fan of extreme heat so I decided not to increase the Chillie content above an extra teaspoon in the final recipe. Perhaps this could be said I am not following this recipe so how can I achieve the same result but I don't think the "heat" aspect would affect the overall flavour too much.
My first reaction to the Curry Recipie was how odd to just "boil" the chicken instead of fry. However, it really does make for tender and moist meat. Perhaps adding some turmeric to the water for added effect or even pre-cooking in some of the base sauce would be an option? However, Darth's method was good enough for me.
Making the finished curry was very simple and straightforward. Fry off some Garlic and Onion, Gather all the spices together, Pre-cook the chicken add a bottle of Passata, add these things in sequence to an amount of the base sauce. Bring to the boil and..............done!
My bowl of powdered spices was fairly substantial as I had used rounded dessertspoons of each. On reflection I think I have made my own error here and should have used level spoons as the resulting taste was strongly spice tasting. Not spicy as in "chilli heat" but just too much spice. The predominant taste was Fenugreek Leaves and I think I had overdone this a little. Perhaps my dessertspoons are a different size from the author's!?
The actual taste was lovely but just too much taste if you can understand that!
Next time I will reduce the quantities of spices and see how that goes.
The final dish, of which I had three whole litres was enough for about 8 curries. It looked the right colour, was of the right consistency and tasted a lot like I expected it would. The only let down for me was the overspicy end taste but I think it was my error.
I shall definatley be making it again as I feel it is a worthy contender as one of the "good one's on the site" but I need to review what I did and compare this with Darth's instruction's to see what I "should" have done!
With all credit to Darth I think he has a good curry base and it's no wonder he puts a high mark of success to it and has followers at his work who rate it.
But it also goes to show whatever recipes we follow and no matter how good the author say's they may be there is always some bozo like me that comes along, jumps in with both feet and cocks it up!!.
Better luck next time eh !
Ray