Quote from: pete on April 13, 2005, 05:41 PM
No one,except Bruce Edwards (curry house cookery extracts) has seen it.

and Pat Chapman of course? ;D

QuoteThe trouble is that it takes so long.
You will have to be there for 3-4 hours

Which is why I asked the question. I don't believe anyone has seen the whole base sauce preparation actually done in a real restaurant. But if anyone has please speak up!

Quote from: Curry King on April 13, 2005, 02:55 PM
As far as im concerned ive seen a base made through from start to finish there was no chicken stock invloved

You've seen this done in a indian restaurant from raw ingredients to finished curry?

Quote from: adamski on April 12, 2005, 09:01 PM
My best friend is a very commited vegetarian, and he loves his curry. So when I mentioned this to him he was very worried.

So he called up his local take-away which he uses every week and asked to speak to the manager

The manager told him they would never use chicken stock or any meat product

Let's see now. Say I'm I'm a curry house manager and I get a phone call asking whether there is chicken stock in the veggie curries. Now what would I say, given that my livelihood and that of the 70,000 other employees in this trade, depends on the continued sale of curries. I'm going to lie through my teeth aren't I.

I don't know whether there is or is not stock in the base sauce, although I suspect that there is, but what I know for sure is that no one in the trade is going to admit to it if there is. Sales would drop, court cases would flourish, it's just not going to happen. This is why I keep repeating that someone needs to see the whole of the base sauce preparation.

Quote from: Curry King on April 11, 2005, 04:44 PM
Seriously though how bad can it be, these places must get checked by environmental health visitors etc.. I'm sure if something that bad was going on such a massive scale then someone would have spotted something over the years.

Quote from: Keith on April 11, 2005, 05:05 PM
In this day and age of health and safety in kitchens it just wouldn't be worth their while decieving us with garbage . They'd be closed down in a minute .

I think you're confusing two totally separate issues. The restaurants aren't contravening any health and safety codes by using chicken stock in the sauce, if infact that is what they are doing. And environmental health don't ever go into the exact contents of a particular recipe unless there is a very obvious reason to do so, e.g. people getting regularly ill.

What they would be guilty of is contravening trading standards by advertising a dish as vegetarian when it has chicken stock in it. As others have mentioned I wouldn't want them to be pulled up for this if it meant that my restaurant curries lost that taste because of it.

Quote from: pete on April 01, 2005, 09:58 PM
The recipes we've brought back have got us close but NOT given people what they want.
In fact, they have not given me what I want.

That doesn't mean they are not appreciated Pete! Sometimes we can learn as much from what we don't achieve as we do from what we do.

Quote from: Admin on April 01, 2005, 06:54 PM
In a small takeaway on a busy night with 10 to 15 orders i just can not see the curry man scooping off the oil and chucking it back in the curry gravy pot....no way....no chance....not gunna happen

And yet, that's exactly what some people on this forum have either seen the chef do or been told that the chef does. I don't know what to believe now.

Quote from: George on April 01, 2005, 05:38 PM
The next time I eat out I may ask if my selected dishes have any ghee in them, implying that I hate the stuff or am alergic to it. The response, and corresponding taste of what arrives, may tell me something.

George
I was thinking along exactly the same lines. It doesn't tell you what else is in the curry, but it does allow you to rule out at least one ingredient that you might suspect is in the curry. If enough of us did this in a systematic way we could at least rule out or confirm some of the ingredients we suspect are in the restaurant curries.

But this allergy thing set me off thinking as well. Two of the most common and dangerous allergies are nut and shellfish allergies. Now if they are dishing the oil scooped off the curries back into the base sauce pot, then inevitably at some point they are going to mix either prawn or nut in there. So although I was convinced that this was a common practice previously, I now think it can't be. Unless they are in someway able to be very selective, but it all starts to sound like too much effort for a busy kitchen. So I now think that the oil from curries is not put back into the base sauce pot. Ah well, back to the drawing board!

Here's a pic of me igniting the oil. As you can see I don't do things by halves.? ?;D

There's no real magic to it but you do need a very high heat for it to always work. The addition of a SMALL amount of curry sauce to the oil causes an atomised mix of sauce/oil to spit over the side of the pan where the high heat ignites it. This is why the chefs don't just bung all the base sauce in at once. You will never do it consistently unless you have a very high heat, only add small amounts of sauce each time and make sure your sauce is already very hot before adding. Of course you must also use a low sided pan, a frying pan will do.

Quote from: DARTHPHALL on March 31, 2005, 10:05 AM
This tasted just like my local take-aways but oddly did not smell exactly the same ,i`ve had this before (not this recipe,but one very similar)
? were its smelled exactly
? the same but not tasted ,i have that recipe in my curry log , I'm going to experiment & combine both & see if have the holy grail,will post next
? weekend the result of my work.

? ?
Darth can you post the recipe that you think gives you the right curry smell please.