Quote from: Phil (Chaa006) on January 15, 2012, 03:42 PM
What exactly do you find so difficult to understand in that idea ?

I don't think I'm the one finding things difficult to understand. I have posed three questions, none of them so far have been answered as far as I'm concerned. But let me make one of them a little clearer -

How is the Chef's Special Garam Masala actually being used? As a traditional Garam Masala would be or as a more generic Spice Mix and if it's the latter, why is it being called Garam Masala?

As you appear to understand things very clearly, perhaps you might like to offer an answer or your own opinion on this?

Quote from: olleysarmies on January 15, 2012, 02:45 PM
Anyway that's why I joined this forum to find a really good Korma recipe, so we can carry on with our traditional Friday night Curry night treat.  Thanks Jackie

Hi Jackie, welcome to the forum.

Not quite sure how you rate pre-packaged curries so highly, none of them get close to the real thing in my opinion.

With a little practice and understanding and by following some of the tried and tested recipes here you should soon be producing dishes pretty close to what you would expect to find in a decent local take away and far better than you'll get in any supermarket.

I avoid those supermarket 'curry sauces' like the plague - they don't produce anything worth eating in my experience. There's no substitute for using fresh ingredients and spices and learning a few basic techniques.

Quote from: Razor on January 15, 2012, 01:34 PM
As for the "Chef's Special Garam Masala", I read that as nothing more than the chef's own GM recipe, and nothing really special at all..!

As I said in the previous thread - at what point does a Garam Masala stop being a Garam Masala and actually becomes something else?

I believe the use of the term Garam Masala is becoming blurred almost to the point that no-one really understands what Garam Masala is any more or when or how it should be used.

In traditional Indian cookery, Garam Masala contained the four principal spices responsible for producing 'body heat' namely Black Peppercorns, Cloves, Cinnamon and Cardamon, hence the name Garam (heat) and Masala (spice mix). This was added in small quantities at the end of cooking to add aroma and fragrance to the finished dish. This was after the principal spicing of the dish had already been cooked into it at the beginning using the usual spices found in Indian cuisine - turmeric, cumin, coriander, paprika, chilli etc.

Yet now we see spice mixes that purport to be Garam Masala that may or may not contain any of the principal ingredients and more often than not will contain large quantities of the cheaper ingredients such as coriander, cumin, paprika and so on that should be used at the start of the cooking process - not at the end. I even saw a Garam Masala in Tescos that didn't contain any of the four main principal ingredients of traditional Garam Masala.

Now we're starting to see the term Chef's Special Garam Masala being used, so the question is, what is a Chef's Special Garam Masala, what spice components does it contain and how is it being used?

Quote from: curryhell on January 15, 2012, 12:08 PM
There has always been talk of a match of spicing to base and i think you've hit the nail on the head.  It isn't so much a matter of "this spice goes with this base which goes only with these recipes".  Basically, it's about achieving the balance between the spice mix versus the gravy.

I find these statements contradict each other.

Base gravy's are and should be matched to their respective spice mix's which should also be matched to the recipes that go with them. All three of them work together in balance - that's where the balance you refer to comes from.

If you take one persons base gravy and make it with another persons spice mix and make that with someone else's recipe, how can there be any balance (or understanding) in the ingredients and level of spicing used? And just as importantly how do you adjust the spicing from one dish to another?

There's a number of ways that the flavours from whole spices can be included in the final dish and I think a lot of BIR's do it via the precooking of the meat or principal ingredient. There's a number of 'pre-cook' recipes on here that include whole spices in them.

For me personally, I still have a bit of a problem with the term Garam Masala and the way it is now being used on here, it's starting to morph into something completely different and I know this has been discussed before, but it seems to keep coming up.

So now we've got the term Chef's Special Garam Masala to contend with. At what point does a Garam Masala stop being a Garam Masala and start being a Chef's Special Garam Masala? And how does that Spice Mix differ from any other Spice Mix if we don't know what the ingredients are?

There's some confusion here (and in my mind) of precisely what a Garam Masala is and what a Spice Mix is and the two terms now seem to be almost interchangeable. As far as I'm concerned, a Garam Masala is defined by it's principal ingredients and how it's used, but that doesn't appear to be the case any more

Welcome Steve, it sounds like you're pleased to be here! 

Quote from: 976bar on January 14, 2012, 11:25 AMHave you ever heard the album "Aja"? Simply brilliant!!

Indeed I have, I still have most if not all Steely Dan Albums on vinyl! I might give Aja a twirl today actually, as it's been a while since I've heard it. If you like Steely Dan, you'd probably also like Donald Fagen's first album, The Nightfly, as it's one of my all time favourites and beautifully recorded, one of the first vinyl albums to be fully digitally mastered.

Sadly the compression audio formats like MP3 impose does the album no favours and it loses a lot of it's sparkle. Here's the title track, where Fagen's lyrics refer to some of his childhood dreams -

Donald Fagen The Nightfly (HQ)

Quote from: curryhell on January 14, 2012, 09:55 AM
It doesn't get any better.  My all time favourite musical track

Ahh yes, that good old musical satire on the excesses and stupidity of the music industry in LA in the late 70's. Some great analogies in the lyrics and a nod to Steely Dan towards the end, great stuff.

Quote from: curryhell on January 13, 2012, 09:07 PM
However, on occasions when I

Quote from: curryhell on January 13, 2012, 05:47 PMOver the years i have regularly found whole spices in my curries which can only have come from the base

Highly unlikely in my opinion. The whole spices are far more likely to have come from the finished dish rather than the base gravy. It's in the finished dish where flavours are fine tuned and tweaked and that's where the Chef would be using whole spices.

Very few if any base gravy's I've ever come across use whole spices in them. That's not to say that they can't/won't/shouldn't contain whole spices - but it's not usual practice in my experience.