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At first the pan was on a farly low heat,then after a while he put the lid on and it began boiling.As with my other take-away gravy the chef stressed that the onions MUST be cooked until they've virtually melted.When the gravy was ready he took an onion out,held it between his figures to illustrate the point,

This seems to be key to a good base and has been mentioned before. Can you approximate the time the onions were cooked for to reach this "melting point"? There seem to be wildly different interpretations among posters here of the "right" duration to cook onions in a base gravy, so it would be a useful reference point.

Hi Mike and welcome.
Details of your spice mix and indeed any reliable recipe you've found to be worth sticking with would be appreciated if posted.

There are many who yearn for the flavours of Indian restaurants from days gone by and I'm not sure you will find the recipes posted here will fully scratch that itch, as it does seem that in the 80s BIRs were cooking with especially labour intensive recipes (making use of illegal immigrants in the kitchens perhaps) and that the modern curries all made from a single shared pot of base gravy are just not spiced as highly or uniquely.

Even so, there are some cracking recipes here which will exceed the standards of the typical modern BIR when cooked right.

Just a tip for anyone trying this recipe... It seems to be important to not roll the naans out too thinly. 170g weight per doughball seems to work well and when stretched out to a good size the naan bread is not too thin.

I know not everyone is set up to record and post videos and there's hurdles like getting a way of mounting a camera, editing, setting up YouTube etc, so maybe it's cheeky to ask... But....

Now you've achieved your current level of knowledge of BIR it would be a great checkpoint for some of the rest of us to see a video of you cooking a pathia from the start, ie. Base gravy, spice mix, final dish, everything.

Yes it probably is too much to ask you to go through that hassle, but if you ever get the chance to it would be a really useful reference point.

Quote from: Bengali Bob on September 11, 2015, 03:45 PM

Special lamb curry

Messing about with pre-cooked mutton shoulder, Persian seven-spice and cream

I've tried a few different meats/cuts for my meat curry, for days when chicken curry just won't cut it. I settled on mutton shoulder as the best all around flavour / texture for curry. Takes a good amount of pre cooking to make it tender though. Your post first put me onto mutton shoulder as a good candidate. Thanks

Onions vary in strength. It may be the recipe you use normally works because the onions you've been using are mild, but this time you bought some stronger onions which developed a bitter flavour.

The fix would be to cook them for longer, they will mellow and sweeten.

Looks about a hundred times better than my first bir attempts. Good work

I don't think you can go too far wrong with a good old Krups F203. You'll probably find them on offer somewhere what with it being Black Friday weekend. Or more likely you'll find they're at the same price they always were, but with a "Black friday" sticker plastered on and fools climbing over each other to get to the shelves.

Sorry, hope the portrait image doesn't mess things up but tonight the Sunday roast came a day early. A lovely Shiraz provided the orchestra.

I've not been a very good boy, so I'm asking for something far cheaper

Andoer Professional Kitchen Knife Sharpener System Fix-angle 4 Stones https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AT81AVG/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_q.vgwb1SB6PC3

I don't like to push my luck...