Quote from: beachbum on March 07, 2012, 06:45 AM
I just ordered his "Balti" book from The Book Depository, so let's see how that goes.

On the subject of fats, I was briefly on a Paleolithic diet (what you can kill, pick off a tree, dig out of the ground with a sharp stick or gather from a nest preferably after climbing up a 500m cliff face)  ;D - one of the interesting things I learned was the industrial conspiracy behind the "saturated fats and butter are bad, veg oils and marge are good" mantra.

This mob explain it far better than I could: http://www.drcranton.com/nutrition/oiling.htm
It's a long read but will raise your eyebrows. And very appropriate to this forum.

However it's true what they say, that 80 years ago, despite the fact that most people would live to 70 or 80 except they often got knocked off by infectious disease, coal mining accidents or several World Wars - growing up in the UK in the 1950s all my aunties and grannies lived to 95 but the men got culled out by the above fates.... I digress - heart attacks were very rare. But everyone lived on bread and dripping, breakfasts fried in lard and as much butter as they could afford. They also walked to work, did manual or hard factory work and didn't sit on their arses in front of an LCD for half the day, and a perfect weekend consisted of playing local soccer or climbing Pen-Y-Ghent with the Mrs and Kids. When I was a wee nipper I drank the little bottle of olive oil from the medicine cabinet and Mam rushed me off to the doctor ... 

I buy Indian ghee from a local Indian Grocer for ?6 a kilo tin, nice.  And it's from genuine holy cows

The Balti book is probably one of his better ones, Beachbum, but (as with just about all recipes) you'll probably find you need to tweak it here and there to get the results you're after. (I'm sorry, Pat, but a miserly 8oz of onions and 6fl oz of water does NOT make a curry with enough sauce for four people - unless of course they're Lilliputian.)

And I can't agree more with what you say above about saturated fats and health (many thanks for the link, too. Most interesting). My grandparents had bloody hard lives living in Yorkshire bringing up my mum and dad during WW2, and I've listened to many a tale of how gran used to pack my dad's dripping sandwiches for school before leaving the house at 5am to walk 8 miles to do a 10-hour shift at t'mill. She smoked like a trooper, cooked everything in lard, survived breast cancer in her late 60s, and lived to 98.

But before I launch into the Python sketch ("Dripping sandwiches? Luxury! We couldn't afford dripping sandwiches. We had to lick road clean wi' tongue..."), it's the same story elsewhere.

In France, for example, the diet is heavy in saturated fats - duck fat, goose fat, butter, etc., yet they have a low incidence of heart disease.

Anyway, keeping loosely on topic, butter ghee has long been my cooking fat of choice, and will continue to be so for as long as the old ticker holds out!

Quote from: Les on March 07, 2012, 09:41 AM
Hi jocko
One of my local T/A has a slight after taste of aniseed, Which I would put down to Star Anise,(could even be fennel) But don't know if it's in the base or the final dish, Would be interesting to find out though.

I quite often come across the odd segment of star anise from some of the restaurants I frequent, and like any whole spices I find in BIR dishes, it usually bears the signs of being well used (i.e. having been through extended cooking).

If they use it in the base it will usually form part of an akhni stock along with other whole spices (cassia bark, cardamoms, Asian bay, etc), which is strained and the whole spices saved for the next stock (as was reported by the Fleet 5 on their visit to the Zaal, under the tutelage of chef Az).

It's more likely that it finds its way into the final dish accidentally via the pre-cooked meat stock, which often includes whole spices. (I know this happens when I cook at home, and all to the good.) 

But next time you go in why not ask them? I've found most restaurant / TA owners more than happy to chat about their dishes, and if it's not too busy some will even usher you behind the TA counter into the kitchen for a shufty.

Worth a try, anyway...

Quote from: Martinwhynot on August 09, 2010, 07:30 PM

Quote from: Unclefrank on August 09, 2010, 01:12 PM
That is the only "bad" one i have made with the Ashoka base all the other recipes have been quite nice.I too have been eating curries for around 30 odd years and have tried a varied amount to date from nearly everywhere in England and a few abroad but never have i tried one from Scotland (well one from Dunfries) so i just need to know "what is the difference?".And what is "that taste".
What makes the Ashoka recipes different from various recipes around this great isle we live on.
Thanks.

Hi Frank,

I'll try to answer to the best of my ability but the best thing would be go there and try one  ;D

The bunjara is very strongly flavoured (if you've never made it up).  It has notes that I would describe as Moorish (from the cinnamon), sweet and has a beautiful warmth to it.  This flavoured addition to the base sauce does 'elevate' the flavour to a more complex dish that you just quite can't put your finger on if I'm honest - it's just a wonderful blend of slightly sweet/tomato/subtle cinnamon/coriander taste that I've just not had in England (and I've lived in Hants, Herts, Gloucester, London, Kent, Belfast & Berks so have been around a few!).  The sauces are more reliant on the bunjara than a mix yet the taste is a bit stronger than in England.  In the restaurant in Scotland (speaking generally!) the portions are much bigger - I have relatives who visit London regularly and refuse to eat Indian there - too expensive and half the amount they say.

To sum it up, if it's possible, I'd say slightly more play on the tomato, cinnamon and coriander blend.  I'd pick a West Coast/Glasgow curry out of a taste challenge every time.

I hope (but doubt!) that helps.  If you're just curious try it.  If you're somewhere in England trying to replicate your local favourite restaurant I'd say forget this but perhaps the bunjara will inspire you to make your own speciality dish.

Incindentally, my parents are down visiting me just now and we've just finished an 'Ashoka'  bhuna.  We had my 'normal' bhuna on Friday night and my dad did say the Ashoka one tasted 'local' and he much preferred it. 

Happy cooking!

Martin   

Just found this thread, and having apparently followed Martin around the UK and Scotland (albeit unwittingly) on the curry quest, he's absolutely bang on about the differences.

My Scottish hunting ground was the West Coast (I lived and worked in Irvine and Glasgow), and after being used to "soft southern nancy" curries most of my life I was blown away by the intensity of the curries up there, and have been chasing that taste ever since.

Needless to say, I'm delighted to have found this and I'm champing at the bit to give this recipe a go, so will report back next week on completion of a hopefully successful mission.

Maybe the chef at emin-j's TA was using the reduction method a la Taz? I know this works as I've managed to produce some great results, even when using bases that don't contain as much oil as the Taz base (i.e. which require the addition of oil to the pan in the beginning).

That said, I've found the slow boat method doesn't produce the same consistency of results as the SFQ (singe-fuse-quench) technique. Sometimes I get a stunning curry, while other times it's merely okay.

This is, of course, 100% down to the skill of the chef, and while I'm a long time practitioner of this dark art, I am in no way a skilled chef...

Quote from: curryhell on March 06, 2012, 07:03 PM
I agree SD that the only way of getting a dry saag bhaji will be to use either fresh or frozen.  But i would definitely not discount the puree from being used in spinach and meat dishes.
Have just come out of the kitchen and this is a pic of the end result

Verdict.  Made it to spec.  At the end of the cooking i added the tomato and a couple of tsps of fresh corriander. The only thing i did do was to add a stick of cassia for a bit while frying the onions as I happened a cross a lump the other week in my local's dish.  I always knew it was added but until then i didn't know how they did it.  Texture wise it was dryish and getting closer to what i am trying to achieve  .  I added loads of onion like yourself and as Az did at Zaal's. I gave the spinach a damn good squeeze and got more than 100ml of liquid out.  I then proceeded to give it a good chopping with a knife to give it even more of a chance to dry out during the cooking stage and to make sure it didn't clump together.
Taste wise,  I think i'll appreciate the flavour more later on as my mouth is just recovering from the removal of a rather iritating and angry back molar.  I an not convinced about not adding mix powder though, in order to replicate my local's flavour.  And i have some ideas on how to get it dryer still and getting some more flavour into the dish.  One thing i keep noticing in my attempts to replicate this dry dish is how chewy / stringy  the spinach is.  Another reason for giving it a good going over with the knife  ;D . Some people say you don't need to cook the frozen stuff.  The packets i have looked at say you do and so do some people .  What's your take on this?  This may remove the strong spinach flavour and make it a little more subtle.  It may also make it a little more tender and reduce the strigniness.  Being a regular maker of this dish, what do you think?

Looking good there, Curryhell - and you're obviously more of an onion fiend than even I!  ;D

(Coincidentally enough, I made this tonight to accompany a meat and potato curry, and if I may say so, damn fine it was too.) 

It sounds as though we're (naturally) both aiming to replicate the same dish we get at our local BIRs, and these obviously differ. I've been in the kitchens of two local restaurants and watched my saag bhaji being cooked, and neither use mix powder or cassia bark - just ghee, garlic, onion, salt (lots) and turmeric. I'm going to give it a go with the mix powder and cassia though, as it will definitely add a different dimension. How much mix powder did you use? This dish (for me) is all about smokey, garlicky spinach though, so I'd personally go for no more than 0.5tsp of mix powder.

As for the frozen spinach needing cooking, well it gets more than enough cooking when you make the dish. The instructions on my packet (Tesco) just say for best results cook from frozen. (But then that's what it says on pretty much ALL packets of frozen veg, probably to comply with some H&S / food hygiene legislation?) This is fine - IF you want a plate of soggy spinach sitting in a 100ml pool of water. To get rid of this via reduction would take ages and result in an overcooked dish in which the garlic and onions have become stewed. So, following the BIR lead I defrost then squeeze the living daylights out of the spinach to get as much water out as possible, It's only when you do this that you can get the spinach dry enough to catch a little here and there to give a few charred edges, which again is what I get in the BIRs that do this dish the best, IMHO.

I can put my hand on my heart and say that I've never experienced any stringiness from the Tesco frozen spinach. It's always been nice and tender (but maybe I've been lucky).

Chuffed to hear your getting close to what you're after though.

@curryhell: Is that a thumbs down for the tinned leaf spinach as well as the puree?

Each to their own, but a it's a thumbs down from me.

From my own experience I don't think it's possible to produce a decent dry-style sag bhaji with anything other than fresh or frozen, and I've always had my best (BIR) results with the frozen.

But I'm always happy to be proved wrong! (Just don't tell the missus...  )

A much hated ceramic hob in the kitchen, and an 8.8kw burner in the shed...

Quote from: martinvic on March 06, 2012, 02:02 PM
  Arrived this morning Michael, I really can't believe how much you have sent.

It is really appreciated, and am feeling a little guilty about it, so if you have a paypal address PM me it so I can at the very least pay you the postage costs.

Martin

Same here!

I reckon with postage, padded envelope, etc - not to mention the quantity sent - we're talking at the very least a fiver, so as Martin says PM a pay-pal or even online banking details and I'll get it across to you today.

Thanks again!

(Incidentally, this is the second bit of curry related generosity I've encountered today - the first being when I dropped into my friendly local Indian grocer for a 25kg bag of onions (

Quote from: jb on March 05, 2012, 07:14 PM
Looks very nice to me,interesting to see no mix powder involved,just as Az cooked his.I do like a nice sag bhaji but often round here where I live they're invariably soggy and not very good.I did use the frozen briquettes once but made the big mistake of putting them in still frozen...not very good!!..I always see tinned spinach in my corner shop I wonder if anyone actually uses that stuff.

I've had a few too many sag bhajis and sag aloos from BIRs that used tinned spinach, JB, and the best I can say about it is that it's unpleasant but just about edible.

To be fair, the last time I came across it in a BIR was about 5 years ago. Most seem to have graduated to frozen, and some use fresh from time to time.

Being honest, in this particular dish I actually prefer frozen....

Quote from: Secret Santa on October 30, 2010, 11:15 AM

Quote from: fridgedoc on October 30, 2010, 06:36 AMJust a little tip when freezing chillies, lay them out on a tray, not touching each other and freeze over night (24 hours) once frozen can be put into a freezer bag

Hi Stephen

I think you're making it more complicated than it needs to be. I just put the whole bunch of chillis in a freezer bag and freeze. They separate quite easily.

Yep - same here.

Never had a problem.

Quote from: beachbum on March 06, 2012, 08:53 AM
Just bumping this topic if anyone is interested,
My son bought me a food dehydrator for Christmas, which turned out really useful as I had about half a bucket of red chillis to be picked.

they are quite cheap, and consist of several trays that sit on top of each other and a gentle stream of hot air gets blown up from the bottom for a few hours. You can also do banana chips and other trendy snacks. They are quite cheap, around twenty quid or so.

I now have enough dried chilli to last me for a couple of years, I reckon. I pop some in the spice mix and grind them, or just give them a quick whizz with a stick blender to make chilli flakes.

Genius! One of my daughters has recently got into the (surprisingly tasty) world of raw food, and has just bought a dehydrator. Hadn't thought of using it for drying chillis, but I can now quite clearly see a strong mental image of me doing that very thing.

Thanks for the tip!