Thanks. Probably need to work on my setup a bit as currently not easy to contain the curry odours just to a small area which could be cleaned as described.  No doors on the kitchen for a start, which is always going to be a challenge (tried cleaning the sofa with deepio chewy?!) Plus oil absorbing wood everywhere - walls, ceilings, floor.

Maybe I will yet have to come up with a curry shed concept, but -10C outside at the moment, so that's also somewhat challenging.

For now, total curry exclusion order remains in place. 

Looks good Livo and well proven family favourite recipes are worth their weight in gold so please do share. I have a pretty mean lasagne meat sauce recipe of my own, which I make in batches and use in various different meals.  Will be interesting to compare and see how you make it down under.

Interesting to see you feel you make it differently every time. To me one of the fundamentals of the approach I take to home cooking is keeping notes and updating / adjusting the quantities, times, etc until I have a nailed down version which I can then repeat without variation each time I cook. I just don't like to risk random variations as ingredients are expensive and I prefer to avoid the disappointment which comes when you realise the meal you got spot on last time you cooked it has this time come out too salty, dry or whatever.

Hence I always take a few iterations to zero in on my idea of the "right" recipe for each dish I cook, then use my previous notes to make sure I'm cooking it "right" each time I do it.

A familiar problem - you're making progress with your quest to achieve true BIR nirvana at home and have possibly been cooking curry once or twice too often in the past weeks. You open the door to walk back in from a shopping trip and wifey exclaims that the place smells like an Indian restaurant. Boom, before you know it you've had a total curry exclusion order slapped on you, and you can only browse this forum and weep at the memory of the curries you once cooked 

How to avoid this sad state of affairs?

Yes, some things are obvious, the splatter guard over or around the pan. Cleaning the cooker and splash back down straight after cooking and of course the humble kitchen extractor fan / cooker hood. However... these things in my experience are not a fully reliable solution and that smell just spreads and seems to soak into kitchen cupboards, plasterboard walls and soft furnishings. Something to do with the tiny airborne drops of curry infused oil which erupt from the pan as you're frying spices.

So... since we all presumably share this common problem, do any of you bright sparks have a solution?  I see some of the more dedicated ones have built curry sheds outside your main home, with a second hob, worktop, etc.  Nice if you have the space, time, money, etc... but are there any other solutions you've found to this problem?

No Livo, the difference between someone who knows how to cook and someone who doesn't, is the former doesn't spend hours cooking a base gravy then have to throw it away because they messed up. I've never binned a base gravy, so draw your own conclusions.

Quote from: livo on December 11, 2018, 09:39 AM

I notice you've provided no advice on the question of beef. Enlighten us all.

Have I missed the introduction of a new rule where no one can reply to a thread without answering every question within it, or are you just "sprouting" (sic) ?!

Quote from: livo on December 11, 2018, 07:27 AM
It could be saved by using half of it at a time and adding it in to make another batch of gravy. Just adjust spicing a little bit to make it a decent sort of base.  Extra onions and thicken it up a bit.  Or you can dump it and go again.

Nonsense!  You're advising him to add his base to another batch of base, or to add extra onions to it?  Or "dump it"

He just needs to use the base he has properly.  If you don't know the answer to a question posed, better to stay quiet than to start giving dodgy advice. You're just going to cost the guy time, money and frustration.

Thin base is not a problem. Not cooking the curry long enough, is.  This is what results in a runny curry,  Simply cook your final dish long enough to get to a consistency you like, and forget trying to match the brief cooking time you see in videos from BIR kitchens.

It sounds to me like you're following a recipe which mentions a cooking duration and, entirely reasonably as a beginner, you're sticking with that.  Better to throw the cooking time expectation out the window and just cook it to where you're happy with it.

At home, without a high output burner, it's hard to get the spices in a curry cooked properly without extending the cooking time longer, which a thin base helps you achieve. Thicker bases which force you to not cook the curry long enough are a problem imho.

Does anyone still make and use bunjarra in their curries?  I was thinking it might make for a good addition to precooked potatoes, as the flavours in bunjarra would surely work well infused into spuds. Not so convinced about putting it direct into a curry but maybe I just need to try it.

The panpot recipe which started this thread made no mention of what to do with the whole spices (bay leaves and cinnamon stick) st the end of the cook period, so I guess they are just fished out and disposed of (or if you're a BIR, left in there for a customer to choke on, as I've defnstely found big bits of bay leaf in bir dishes in the past).

Checking CBM's bunjarra recipe he has you blend the whole thing at the end, but this doesn't sit well with me. I prefer the panpot directions because if cooked long enough the onions will surely break down into a kind of paste on their own.

One to go on my never ending list of things to try soon.

Please do not change the subject line when replying to threads Livo. This makes no sense when viewed, especially since you're also using abbreviations without defining them. Only by ploughing through the whole thread can we make sense of what you're on about.

If you just replied to the thread leaving the subject line unchanged, we would at least have a chance.

Hi Scotty, welcome back - I remember your recipes as being a cut above the average for Chinese, so look forward to you giving us the low down on some more takeaway secrets!

Hope your BIR cooking scratches the itch. Two years without a decent curry must have been hard.  What part of China were you in and how is it there? 

Thanks SS, I will try that method and compare results. I must bite my tongue at this point and not rush to judgement, so will do that and give it a try instead.