Hi curry addicts!  ;D Hope you all had a great weekend! Many of us have personally seen pataks kashmiri paste in BIR kitchens (including me), how do you think they use this. My understanding is they use it in the balti dish. But thats as far as my knowledge goes. anyone know if its used for marinade or actually added directly to the balti sauce during cooking? cheers DD

ouch Bobby!  ;D lol

the bir smell is partly due to loads of methi being cooked all day. slowly cooking  yogurt and oil infused with cardoman cinemon cloves chilly etc is also another bir smell which lingers. its a good question! 

The one jar i would really like to stumble across in an indian grocery is "magic BIR paste" tee hee  ;D. Or would that ruin our fun?!!

Hi Bobby, I am not sure if its any better than the shop stuff. But its a good way to use up ginger and garlic that have been lying around! I just wizz it up with some water in blender. Its thinner and more watery than the shop stuff, so is great for CR0 usage!

Hi, I have been making my ginger garlic paste with equal amounts of each, recently using my blender. However i am not sure if i should reduce the garlic and have around 70 percent ginger? How do you guys and gals make your garlic ginger paste? do you add any other ingredients into it as well? cheers DD

Hi Jerry, i am already excited about hearing how you get on with a propane gas hob. You clearly have the experience to really make full use of one. I think you are on to a winner there! On the topic of the chicken taste in the base, the BIR chef commented that some restaurants put chicken soup in the base. I actually brought some quality chicken soup after the demo, but somehow couldn't bring myself to add it to last weeks safron batch! It looked so tasty bubbling away as it was, i left it be!   ;D 

Jerry, i totally agree. I had a demo from a very helpful chap at local BIR and he explained every detail of what was in his tubs, spice mixtures etc. He was definately not hiding anything. The ingredients/techniques are exactly what we all use. The only thing i can't match is the cooker. I am thinking the magic taste must be mostly to do with having flames licking up into the base during cooking, as well as the high heat. My crappy electric hob can never match this. If anyone on this site can comment on how mutch improvement a proper gas cooker achieves, i would love to know. I actually tasted the base in this BIR, and it tasted very similar to the safron base. However it was thinner, had a slight taste of chicken, and basically tasted less 'tasty' than the safron base. My conclusion was that the safron base would have resulted in the same delicious curries, had the chef used my own base during the demo. I believe most mildly spiced, oniony base, will do the job. Its what happens afterwards that really matters. Not that i claim to be any expert! Heck i wish i was!! 

thanks for the text mex!

Thanks for the info Bobby and Jerry. Some interesting food for thought!! But seriously, its nice to have some feedback from cr0 members in addition to reading bruces article. BTW Bobby, the tumeric was added in the spice mix. However, from a recent BIR demo i noticed they add tumeric in the spice mix, and also add it separately, in varied amounts depending on the dish (madras, rogan josh bhuna etc). I think Bruce was right when he mentioned you can make a good curry with just tumeric. i sampled a great mushroom curry during my demo, which had maybe 2 tbs of tumeric in it (and spice mix, garlic ginger etc). I guess tumeric and lots of oil react together nicely during the cooking process.