I like 'curries' full stop. whether bir or not, but I have to disagree on which tastes better. The flavour hit from the best  Indo/Pak restaurants ,regardless of how they're achieved, is something fairly unique. This forum is proof enough of that. I've had homecooked curry in a Pakistani home, where the womenfolk cook all day every day, very tasty, very fresh, yes, but nowhere near as tasty to my palate as the bir version. The food critic & Peter from Family Guy lookalike, Charles Campion, once wrote "tikka masala was created for the ignorant". God knows who he was talking to to but no one was listeing to him thats for sure. Catering for Western palates? They are after all true entrepreneurs.
Looking at the whole bir process & the seemingly oblivious chefs, what we like about bir may simply be a by product of a fast, hot commercial environment 

How does not using a base gravy make it a curry from scratch?

Regards
ELW

The Prashad book definitely has a professional feel to it from what I could see. It looks like what the new restaurants are offering their  take on, in Glasgow

Good pics SD

I did CA's Ceylon last year & have made a note to go back & do it again properly. Never ordered one of these in my life. Anything with 3tsp sugar is too sweet for me also(reduced to 1tsp). I made 2 x full portions of this at the time. Next day it tasted even better

Flicked through the Prashad with the viewer on Amazon, looks like a decent book, some techniques in there that could maybe add to our own creations. These seem to be being revived somewhat in some restaurants, whether as a unique selling point or on merit. I still feel restaurant desi won't be real homecooked desi.

If I don't like the taste of a gravy on it's own, I'll like it even less once reduced in the dish. Not keen on coconut in a base, but other than that alot of bases are much of a muchness to me. I'm finding statement about a gravy 'adding bulk & liquid to a curry' looking more & more likely

I'll need to give it a go, he told me the homestyle karahi takes 45min to prep & cook. Homestyle bhoonas(spring lamb) he says are much 'better'. I'm not sure what he meant by that. Seems to be plenty of yoghurt in the homecooked stuff. I suspect reproducing this at home will be as tricky as the bir stuff.

Dum Pukht is another style of cuisine advertised in certain places

ELW

I stopped splitting hairs over gravies a while back chilli chopper, I now leave sweetness of onions etc to experienced chefs, where it is their business to split hairs. I've listened to Jamie Oliver  go into similar detail  about cherry tomatoes. I personally prefer base gravies with a lower oil content, alot of my local places don't seem to be swimming in oil. In fact some of the dishes have almost a 'matt' look to them. But bir is bir & thats what I'm after on this forum. True, local place has a large desi section on the menu, waiter keeps telling me to try the homestyle karahi, they also do handi, as does alot of other Punjabi places here. Green /black peppercorns & garam masala in the handi dishes here. Not ventured into them yet

There is also a few  'Authentic Indian' restaurants open in the city centre, with menu's barely recognisable to the typical  bir customer. "not a piece of red chicken in sight" came from The Dhabba in Glasgow. I haven't been yet, but I have heard the food from there & another round the corner from it(names slips my mind), really does put some of the best bir stuff in the city in the shade 
I can only resist it so much longer then I'll have to check this out 

ELW

Hi MM, an Indian restaurant owner told me recently he uses four base gravies  in his restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland. Someone came in as he was talking to me & he ended up back in the kitchen before I had time to find out any more.
Whether it was gravies or sauces/pastes(Rogan etc) he meant I'm not sure, but I got the impression he would have been happy to answer my questions if he wasn't so busy. He also told that all the meats are cooked from fresh, so takes a bit longer getting to the table.

Regards
ELW

Quote from: curryhell on March 07, 2012, 07:13 PM

Quote from: ELW on March 07, 2012, 07:04 PM

"The Takeaway Secret "by Kenny McGovern  did instruct the reader to increase the heat at the stages we now know to be important, among a few others

I missed this one totally ELW.  Is a good read and full of info we now know to be correct with methods until of late we chose to ignore??? :
[/quote]

There's some natty little junk food recipe's in that little package, the front cover attracted me to it like a moth to a lightbulb!

Is the singeing of spices nearly impossible to avoid in a hot/fast/commercial environment? Is the 'taste' merely a by product? Why don't Asian homecooks singe & create the taste @ home ?    


Simon Rimmer on Something for the Weekend making a 'curry'

Karl Pilkington(helping chop an onion) ~ "curries cooked at home never taste as good as a takeaway do they?"

Simon Rimmer ~ "this one will, it'll taste much better"

c'mon man, lets have some kind of bir amnesty day with our tv chefs where they can confess all
ELW

Hi Beachbum, I see it on alot of the Korma variants(Nawab,Shahi), some tikka masalas, Pasanda, https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=7895.0, makhani masala. How they find their way in, whether it be in a cream / flaked may differ, but there are plenty of bir dishes containing  both cashew & cream , probably on the mild side

Regards
ELW

Quote from: mr.mojorisin on March 06, 2012, 08:55 PM
may need to ramp up the heat a little with some scotch bonnets
definitely gonna try this out this weekend.
will post results here.
If it fails I can always return to Chewys excellent madras or Abduls excellent Dynamite Chicken
can't really beat a good Glasgow curry IMO.
i gotta say that coz I stay there.lol
I've tried Indian curries in London, Leeds, Manchester,Bournemouth, Poole,Birmingham, Kent, Belfast and Corfu among various places but the Glasgow ones to me are the best.
maybe it's just what you're used to.
I've seen various debates on here about regional variations and the same is said for Glasgow.
You can have a Madras in the East end and it will vary tremendously from one in Drumchapel in the West.
cheers

Madras i'm used to must be 1 TBLSP chilli, pretty hot. If there's any left the following day, I notice alot of the sourness has gone & I can actually taste & smell  the lemon. Think I'll make this at the weekend also using Taj frozen G&G blocks to make the Ashoka ratio, they're so smooth they will mix together with a spoon. Those things are the new rock n roll for me

ELW