Quote from: curryhell on December 30, 2011, 10:33 AMThat curry looks tasty and certainly doesn't bear any resemblance to a BIR tikka masala.

And neither should it! I think the original poster made it quite clear from his post that it was not intended to be a BIR dish at all, I think it's a pretty safe assumption to make that it isn't going to look like one or taste like one for that matter. I certainly agree that it looks very tasty indeed.

This is a particular bug bear for me in these forums, people get far too hung up on what a dish looks like and whether it's a BIR dish or not. Whilst I fully appreciate the site focuses mostly on BIR type dishes, there's a whole wealth of indian cookery and cuisine that falls outside the BIR remit, but are very enjoyable dishes to eat in their own right.

I make a Chicken Masala dish that's about as far away from a BIR styled Chicken Tikka Masala as you can possibly get and it just happens to be one of the nicest flavoured chicken dishes I've ever had whether in a BIR or cooked at home.

It's easy to forget sometimes I think that the dishes you find in BIR's are simply anglicised 'fast food' versions of traditional Indian cuisine and that going back to the cuisines roots can be just as satisfying as trying to replicate the BIR dishes we're all familiar with.

Chicken Tikka Masala is a classic example of what I'm referring to, this is a totally English invention, created specifically for English tastes and does not feature in traditional Indian cookery. Personally (and it is my own personal opinion) I find Chicken Tikka Masala to be quite horrible.

Just another viewpoint.

Ray

As others have mentioned, it's almost certainly your PRAM battery. This stores the date and time along with other things in a small mount of RAM until the computer is powered on again in which case it fetches this information from the PRAM Battery. If it's defaulting back to a default time, it does vary from machine to machine, but on my old Apple laptop it would be 00.00 1912, then it's almost certainly the PRAM battery.

Check online for your make and model and what battery you need as they do vary. Or if you can live with it (as I do) simply reset the date and time back to current and keep the laptop plugged and in sleep mode and trickle charging. The date and time won't change as long as the computer has a power source and isn't shut down.

Quote from: coffee on December 27, 2011, 06:34 PM
Black pepper, Cinnamon,Cloves,Black Cardomons,Star Aniseed,Coriander, Cummin,Red chilli, Mixed spices.

The first four ingredients are standard components of traditional Garam Masala and should constitute the bulk of the ingredients in a good one. My take on the Black as opposed to Green Cardamon is one of cost alone - Green Cardamons are more expensive than Black which have a more earthy less refined aroma and flavour and consequently lower cost. The remaining ingredients I'd suspect are in much smaller quantities than the first four. I'd guess that the 'mixed spices' consists of small quantities of Fenugreek, Mace, Nutmeg etc.

Interesting to compare against the other brands of Garam Masala such as Rajah and Natco that list Coriander as the largest proportional ingredient, which is uncoincidentally a much cheaper ingredient than any of the traditional Garam Masala ingredients of Black Peppercorns, Cinnamon, Cloves or Cardamons.

The only conclusion you can draw from this is that the Jalpur GM is a much higher quality one than either Rajah or Natco that basically just use large quantities of cheaper ingredients and lower quantities of the more expensive ones.

Quote from: JerryM on December 27, 2011, 09:36 AMyou'll have to join the pizza site. the lack of rolling pin use is spot on.

Jerry

I think my pizza making days are long gone! It's a skill I've learnt and can reproduce as and when, but I've kind of moved on now to other things and getting this BIR Curry cracked is my priority at the moment. When I've cracked that I'll find some other culinary challenge!

But if I can help you in any way with regards to your pizza making I'd be happy to. I noticed one of the guys on that site cooking at 500 degrees C, holy cow, tell him the optimum temperature is 370 degrees C! Which is still far higher than you'll achieve in most domestic ovens. A wood fired oven is the 'heart and soul' of a good pizza.

Good Karma!

Quote from: JerryM on December 24, 2011, 09:54 AM
the dough plays a big part in the result and is the 1st to at least start to conquer (remains work in progress for me). the wfo pizza is for defo the top of the game. my bake time is around 2.5 mins. i can get a 3.5 min bake in my domestic oven but it's still well short of the wfo offering.

Jerry

As you rightly say, the dough is paramount to creating a really good pizza. I've always been a fan of the Pizza Express style pizzas, which in my opinion are probably the closest you'll get in this country to a pizza made in italy, the standard thin crust, wood fired oven variety. Although the pizza's you get in Pizza Express have been shrinking year on year - they're tiny now compared to what they used to be, they're still a cut above the processed, formulaic rubbish you'll get in Pizza Hut and other similar styled fast food outlets sadly inspired by America.

I bought Peter Boizot's (the founder of Pizza Express) excellent book, 'The Pizza Express Cookbook' and everything you need to create great classic thin crust pizza's is in that book.

There's no magical ingredients to the dough, it's basically just water/oil, flour, salt and yeast/sugar. What makes the difference (as is so often the case in cooking) is what you do with those ingredients! The two key things in my opinion is the kneading of the dough into the right consistency, but not so hard that you compress all the yeast derived air out of the dough and the correct rising time and activity of the yeast. You also need to spread/stretch the dough out into the required shape by hand, you should not use a rolling pin, that just squashes and compresses all that yeast generated air out of the dough.

If you then cook your pizza in a wood fired oven at the correct temperature you should get the perfect pizza crust - crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside.

If you're serious about getting your dough right, I'd strongly recommend that book as a very good informative read. ISBN 0-241-13077-8. He also gives the recipes for a variety of different types of dough and of course all the classic Pizza Express Pizza recipes are in there as well.

Quote from: Razor on December 24, 2011, 06:11 PM
Sorry, I thought that you meant whole or even dried but yes, Kashmiri mirch, MDH brand.  I know that it shouldn't make a difference but I only use MDH as I believe it to be the best.

Ray

Kashmiri chilli's are Kashmiri chilli's! So named because they come from taa daa Kashmir! Same place as the Saffron. Mirch is a generic Indian word for chilli.

I actually make my own chilli powder up from small dried birds eye (I get these in Spain, locally grown and sun dried) regular long thin red dried chilli's and whole dried Kashmiri chillis. I know, i know, I'm that anal! Sometimes I even add some dried Chipotle (smoked Jalepeno).

I first started doing this when I discovered cumin in bought chilli powder, I wasn't amused.

Quote from: PaulP on December 24, 2011, 05:48 PM
Spicy, you've been posting as Falkor on the other forum, yes/no?

No.

And the relevance of this is?  :

I'm registered on the other forum with the same name as here - but no posts as yet.

Quote from: Whandsy on December 24, 2011, 03:57 PM
Check them out if you haven't already, both articles make fascinating reading imo

Wayne

Thanks for those links. I have read them both before and cooked out the BE base and dish precisely according to his instructions and still didn't get the smokey flavour I'm after, but I do agree with a lot of what he says in both those threads regarding 'technique being everything'.

As I've said before on here, I'm generally pretty happy with the dishes I produce, so much so that I don't even bother with Indian Take aways anymore and even when I do go to an Indian Restaurant, I still prefer my own most of the time.

But my dad's my best critic as he's been eating Currys even longer than I have, even though he knows bugger all about cooking them. Whenever I shove a plate of my own curry in front of him, he scoffs the lot and says that was lovely and I really enjoyed that, (but could do with more salt  :) but you know what, it's still missing that certain 'something'.

As much as I hate saying it, I have to agree with him and that says it all for me really.

Quote from: PaulP on December 24, 2011, 12:37 PM
Have a close look at this video from chewytikka:

Paul

I had seen that video before, strangely enough on another site! But I still don't see how it helps me achieve what I'm looking for as I now have yet another two pieces of conflicting opinion.

In Cory's view it's achieved via high heat and flaming and goes on to quantify that with the higher the sugar content of the dish the more pronounced the smoky flavour, which is logical if you consider caramelisation to be the principal cause. He also goes on to show BIR chefs with flaming pans, which also ties in with what he's saying.

Yet in Chewytikka's video he's cooking along at a leisurely barely simmering heat.

So which is it, high heat or low heat?

Quote from: Razor on December 24, 2011, 01:53 PM...and in some cases tomato puree in the oil at the same time as the spices, which will both no doubt release sugars but to what extent, I wouldn't like to guess.

It's certainly true that tomato puree contains sugars and that may well contribute to the 'toffee' smell, but given that spices are often cooked either in or with tomato puree, I'm not sure you'd want that to burn or risk allowing it to get to the stage where it might burn. I was just reading a thread about cooking tomato puree and what BIR chefs tend to do with it. I think you can discount garlic really - it just doesn't contain enough sugars to make any difference, whereas we know for a certainty that onions contain a lot of sugars particularly in the quantities used in the base gravy and often in the garlic/ginger puree.

You see, understanding the processes and techniques can help you understand how to obtain the flavours!