Quote from: Spottymaldoon on March 27, 2007, 12:25 AM
(2) TEMPERATURE has to be high. Higher than almost any household hob can manage (unless you make tiny quantities). High enough to extract those essential oils from the spices AND to impart a delicious 'singed' aroma to your curry! You curry ought to taste like a badly ventilated Indian restaurant smells!

I use one of these hi flame burners from Nisbets, it is fantastic, it is available in both propane and natural gas versions. It is very high power and pan recovery times are fast, great for Chinese as well.
I have adapted one of my kitchen cabinets so it fits level with the worktop.

I have made Darth?s base recipe this weekend, it smelled very good, I would say during cooking it had the smell of my local BIR Biriani vegetable accompaniment dish. I followed exactly the recipe as given with the exception of the amount of chilli powder, I used only 1 teaspoon, the reason I deviated was because I want to make final curry dishes in varying heat ranges.

I used 600ml of oil as the BIR style; I believe the amount of oil is vital to the final taste/texture.

The final base had a very pleasant taste; the reduced amount of chilli powder came through with nice warmth. As I expected, it had a good depth of flavour but without any one dominating another, this I believe is correct, below is a picture of the finished blended base.

The second picture is the same base recipe but with some extras, I added a few potatoes, some cauliflower and some broccoli, I used Desiree red as they are waxy and do not break up; they also have a very full flavour.

Once the base had been simmering for a while and the potatoes were cooked through I removed them, they had the look and the taste of vegetable Biriani potatoes. I left the cauliflower and broccoli in.

Again the base had a good flavour, nice warmth but with a more pronounced BIR smell, particularly after blending. I will be using the bases at some point this week; I intend to make two identical dishes using one of each of the bases.

I am very excited
Onion

Quote from: stargazer on March 24, 2007, 06:21 PM
Onion, 1/2 pint of oil ...assume this is imperial - approx 19 ounces of oil or about 473 ml? Seems like a lot of oil. what's your total finished output of sauce?. If I read recipe correct you don't water it down at all?

thnx.... I will try this soon.

Hi Stargazer
The oil is important to the finished taste, when you make your final dish you can skim off the oil if you want to, in another of my posts you will find a recipe for a King Prawn Madras which has a picture of the finished dish.

The measurement of oil is imperial, you are correct I do not water it down, the tomato soup and tinned tomato's make up enough liquid, however, sometimes I find that the water content of onions varies depending on how long the retailer/producer has stored them for, if you find the finished base is a little thick then by all means add a little water.

Regards
Onion

Hi Darth
I am going to have a go at making your base this weekend, I have read other recipes and I wanted to ask a question.
Have you tried using potato's in your base and removing them before blending, if so what was the result?

The reason I ask is that in a previous post on a takeaway I had, I ordered just a plain curry sauce, it had distinct aromas of potato and broccoli and perhaps cabbage, I also had a madras and it had the same undertones. This leads me to believe that the plain sauce was more or less just base.

Onion

Hello all

Now you may find this interesting, last night I had a takeaway, nothing amazing there, however along with my usual Madras I also asked them for some plain mild curry sauce, with nothing in it.
I assumed this may be basically just their base sauce largely unadulterated by other ingredients.

I have spent quite some time sniffing it this morning, much to the amusement of my family who arrived in the kitchen to see my face buried in a foil container muttering to myself, we?ve all done it!

It smells and tastes very much like the sauce that is in the vegetable dish that accompanies a Biriani, anyway, I then had a sniff of the Madras sauce, stop laughing. The Madras had undertones of the same smell; it leads me to believe that indeed the plain sauce is mostly base sauce.

You could pick out several different but distinct aromas, quite veggie! I would be interested in any comments you may have about this, or perhaps next time you have a takeaway, try it.

In conclusion, I am going to try a few experiments, I have frozen the plain sauce in small amounts so I can refer to it when I am making base.

Thank you for reading my ramblings, I always get a bit daft after a curry fix. ;D

Onion

Hi everyone
I just thought I would post a couple of pics of a King prawn Madras and special fried rice, made with my base sauce recipe.

The recipe is as follows:

1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon madras curry powder
1 Teaspoon chilli powder
Juice of ? a lemon
? Teaspoon salt
Raw king Prawns (as many as you want)
4 tablespoons oil
Chopped coriander
Some base sauce (recipe for my base is on a previous post)


Mix together the spices in water until it quite loose.
Heat a wide bottomed pan and add the oil, not too hot at this stage.
Add the spice mix and very gently fry for a few minutes.
Add the prawns, raise the heat and fry until they just change colour.
Add the lemon juice and stir.
Add the base sauce and heat rapidly for a few minutes.
Add the coriander, reduce the heat and simmer gently for another few minutes until the oil come to the top.

For the rice:

In a saucepan of boiling water place 1? teaspoons salt, 5 cardamoms, 3 dried bay leaves, 4 whole cloves, and 1 piece of cassia bark.

Let this simmer for about twenty minutes.
Remove the bits and pieces from the water.
Add the basmati rice; simmer gently until the rice is a little under done.
Strain off the rice and rinse with boiling water.
Allow this to go cold; you can then splash a bit of colour around if you want.

In a wok heat a nice chunk of ghee until it is very hot.
Add a couple of large spoons of the curry base sauce.
Add the basmati rice and fry over a high heat.

Passata is simply sieved plum tomatoes, ie tinned tomato's without the seeds, tomato puree however is concentrated tomato flesh, ie with much less liquid and no seeds.

Tomato puree is used as a thickener in tomato based sauces. it has a very concentrated taste and like all tomatoes is quite acidic, when ever you use tomatoes in a dish you should always use a little sugar to add balance to the dish.

Onion

Quote from: stargazer on March 08, 2007, 03:59 AM
Onion...looks delicious! What size tins for Tomato Soup? Here they have 3 diff sizes. What type of oil?

thnx

Hello Stargazer
I use the 200gm tins or you could use one 400gm tin, the oil I use is called again and again, it is a cholesterol free oil available from Tesco, but I guess any oil will do, I have used goundnut oil as well. I try to get one that is as healthy as I can.
I hope this helps.

Onion

Quote from: CurryLover_NZ on March 06, 2007, 07:13 AM
Onion,


I am getting to the end of my last lot of Darth's base (which is superb) and so will give yours a go next time.


CL_NZ

Hi Curry Lover

Thank you for your kind words, I do hope you give it a try. One thing to mention, some onions contain more liquid than others, if you find the finished base a bit too thick for you, just thin it down with some water whilst blending.

Regards

The final pic of the finished blended base.

Enjoy!