Quote from: emin-j on January 22, 2012, 05:16 PM
Welcome garty22, I think Garam Masala (or at least Bay,Cardamom,Clove and Star Anise) is the answer to achieving that savoury flavour that's difficult to produce in a home curry ( for me at least  ) and deserves more investigation, last night I made our usual Madras using the whole spices in the base gravy and it was full of aroma and flavour,just need to work out how the BIR's do it 

The makeup of garam masalas used by restaurants may go some way to answering the taste question. It's been mentioned but there is very little information available outside the trade. I would guess & say that hints at its importance, either right across the trade or chef specific. I have heard that bir chefs can quickly become expendable, to ruthless owners, once their methods are revealed. I suspect the use of whole spices may be limited to better curry shops who can factor the extra labour involved into their price. As you know, whole spices hold far more flavour, & could really set your food apart from the guy down the road. I may be wrong, but I can't see the bog standard ta's straying from the mass production methods, we're all aware of. It brings to mind the whole or chopped onions in the base. I always thought the whole onions were used to allow the chef to get on with something else, as they were going to be blitzed anyway
Star Anise...interestin, never used it in bir

Regards
ELW

Real Curry Recipe's - RCR review


Anyone new to recreating bir@home, who has visited / registered on rcr,(me included) will have found doors locked at every turn with the promise of all kinds of secret stuff for a fee. The info that you can view from a simple registration, amounts to a handful of posts from a handful of members(who I assume have paid a subscription at some point?), still asking the same questions as cr0 members here do daily. So whats behind the curtain on rcr? Draw your own conclusions.I'd stick my neck out & say that there is nothing behind the curtain  that can't be found on cr0. The available recipe's also offer nothing that can't be found on cr0, in terms of base & mix powder. This is a fatal flaw for rcr, which has never been addressed by the site owner. The audience for eating bir curry & learning how to cook it, are poles apart & when your nearest rival (cr0) allows it to be put out there for free, it's the end of the road. Shame because the rcr members have put a huge amount of effort in there.

They're not alone...


Here's a quote from curryhouse.co.uk faqs, which made me click the X button in the corner

"Your balti / korma / whatever doesn't taste like the one in my local restaurant. How come? "


"Whilst I think the free restaurant-style recipes here in the public area are good, the revised versions in the Premium Area are much closer to the ones you'll find in the majority of standard Bangladeshi-run curry houses."
;D

You see the pattern

Regards
ELW

Quote from: Les on January 21, 2012, 10:42 AM
Has anyone ever tried a base sauce from "100 best balti"
If so, Which one, and was it any good? I love balti, but don't want to waste time and money, if It's not up there with some of the best already on here

Les

I've got to admit I've sidelined this for the same reason. It still nags me that the recipe's look really good & the bases look to be full of flavour!

ELW

Quote from: ifindforu on January 21, 2012, 10:29 AM

Quote from: DalPuri on January 18, 2012, 07:21 PM
I'd second ELW on the G/G Ashoka amounts.
Its more like Pre-cooked Garlic Chicken 


Frank. 

Are you doing the paste correct ratio 2 times ginger to 1 times garlic

It was the Ashoka pre cooked chicken jerrym, mentioned making, that we were on about Ifindforu. The recipe is heavy on the garlic! But it comes out the oven very succulent. Your recipe for pre cooked loooks very good. 1st time i've seen more ginger than garlic
Where does your pre cooking liquids go?

ELW

Quote from: gary on January 20, 2012, 08:32 PM
Nice carbon steel pan, obviously no one told him you must use an aluminium one

;D ;D
Thats cos he's not a member of cr0 Gary, the best thing about my new ali pan is that I can now see when "things turn black"

Regards
ELW

Quote from: spiceyokooko on January 20, 2012, 08:09 PM

Quote from: noble ox on January 20, 2012, 07:22 PM
Anyone know how a flavour enhancer works ? :

MSG is probably one of the best known flavour enhancers and it cons your taste buds into thinking something is tastier than it actually is. It kind of amplifies the flavour - particularly with meat. So by using MSG, you can actually get away with lower quality meat, then if you wern't using it.

or even less meat, you can see the attraction concerning profit margins

The texture of that sauce looks bang on!..not too oily & not too thick 

ELW

I remember reading that GM is looked on as natural flavour enhancer, which is added at the end of cooking..maybe 

Quote from: DalPuri on January 20, 2012, 06:04 PM
Firstly, i want to say that i never knew Kris Dhillon posted on this site until yesterday. i thought she had only posted on the other forum.
Anyway,
it was from looking at the growing methi thread and reading Kris' posts that started my browsing mission. I've read through the posts about MSG and All Purpose Seasoning and i think i'll be experimenting with these in the near future.
I checked out a couple of vids just to see at what stage people were adding it, as opinions are mixed. Jury is still out on that one. :
In one of the videos, they mention Shiitake mushrooms as having a high glutamate content and are used as a natural alternative to Monosodium glutamate.

Hmmmm, ok. So what if i dried some Shiitake Mushrooms and powdered them? i thought.

QuoteDiscovery of shiitake powder opens chef's eyes

August 22, 2010|By Eric Gower

Many years ago I tossed a few whole dried shiitake mushrooms into my blender, just to see what would happen. What happened completely changed the way I cook.

I discovered that finely pulverized shiitake powder can radically improve most home cooking. It adds a tremendous amount of flavor and umami (savory goodness) to everything. I now always have a tin of finely ground shiitake near the stove, right next to the salt and pepper. It's become that basic.

The holy grail of cooking for me is that kind of serendipity: discovering new ways to make beautiful food with very little additional effort, either through a new technique or a new ingredient.

Dried shiitake mushrooms are probably not a new ingredient for most Bay Area cooks; many Asian cooking traditions make full use of their meaty, smoky flavors by rehydrating them in water and tossing them - and, often, their cooking liquid - into stir-fries and other dishes.

Looks like someone has beaten me to it 

Here's some more interesting info.

http://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/videos/Jan-Klerken.html

http://www.umamiinfo.com/2011/03/umami-rich-food-vegetables.php/

Cheers, Frank. 

Hi Dalpuri, I use APS in place of salt now & again(rajah is 70% salt). The uncomfortable truth about msg, is that it works a treat !! The problems associated with it & reputations is normally down to it's use in chinese fast food, which can give me stomach pains, due to the large amounts used in dishes like chow mein or the sticky Peking sauce. Apparently the chemical formula of msg is no different than glutamic acid, when isolated & stablised with salt which is fairly controversial. I think a forum member uses it it their base sauce if in remember correctly, I haven't tried that..Parmesan cheese has the highest glutamate content afaik

Regards
ELW

Quote from: emin-j on January 18, 2012, 08:31 PM

Quote from: ELW on January 18, 2012, 08:24 PM

Quote from: emin-j on January 18, 2012, 08:19 PM
After watching my curry being cooked at my favourite T/A I was asking about their base gravy and the ingredients was no different to many of the gravy's on the forum but what he said has stuck in my mind '' If your gravy is not right your curry will not be '' make of this what you will but to me this seems quite an important statement.

Hi emin-j, have you ever tasted your local's base on it's own, in the kitchen? I've settled on that very statement  a while ago...in fact i posted it about 1/2 an hour ago somewhere

ELW

Hi ELW, Yes I had it in mind to ask if I could go into their kitchen so took a teaspoon with me to taste the base ( should have seen their faces when I took it out my pocket  ;D) I just dipped my spoon into their base gravy and it was just a lightly spiced onion soup and very thin in consistency.

The chef may have employed anti surveillance techniques, when the kitchen was infiltrated  ;D..the reason I ask is, I would describe most bases I've made like a lightly spiced soup, but a soup without the stock added, ie a little bit bland & a little bit raw. I have slowcooked the Ashoka base for an entire day after blending, which only intensified the flavour which was already there in the raw base(Which i don't like  ) The background flavour from a  basic curry  from one of my locals, tasted very similar to to the background in many vegetable based Heinz soups, & some of my own soups. Their madras, when you block out the Kashmiri chill & sour lemon, was exactly the same, but to  the normal person , would have tasted 'good' & comment would have been made on maybe the heat of the chilli..I have often wondered what the chef does with the pre cooking broth, or about the use of stock in bir, as there is hardly a professional kitchen who doesn't use it. I'm on this path at the moment, until I can rule it out.
The homecooked equivalent dishes in the mentioned bir, have a waiting time of nearly an hour. I am going to ask how they differ(if a base is used), & semi test this theory

Regards
ELW
"own spoon in the bir kitchen" its classic stuff  ;D