Snowing like a mofu in Fleet. Up to 5 inches already and scheduled for 10 - 16. I'm guessing the schools are closed tomorrow.

Hi emin

I can never resist an onion bhaji question!

The sweetness comes from the onions as does most of the taste. I think you could make some okay bhajis just using onions gram flour and a bit of ground coriander.

The only way to get the sweet taste out of the onions is to deep fry them up to about 60% cooked and leave them at room temperature for 5 or 6 hours (like every BIR in the country does). They will taste much more authentic after the second fry, plus they will be soft and well cooked all the way through.

If the ones from the t/a tasted good then ask what they put in them, most will be happy to tell you. If not, try balancing the spices yourself but less is usually more. The only essentials for me are ground coriander, turmeric, cumin seeds, fresh coriander and a hint of chilli powder. Once you have the method right, you can start looking into which spices work best for you.

I assume this is another BIR time saving recipe for making any of the hot curries. I imagine a ladle of this mixed with 3 ladles of base sauce would make a pretty decent Madras. I once spoke to a chef who talked about having 4 or 5 different bases. They mix and match depending on the result needed. It makes a lot of sense from a time saving point of view.

Jerry, did you try mixing yours with base? If so, how was it?

I guess what we need is an Indian chef watching us cook our curries to pinpoint exactly where we are going wrong. Or maybe we set up a CR0 meetup group and invite (or pay) a chef to come along to give demos. I'd be happy to pay 20 - 30 pounds to get this solved once and for all.

I did that with Zaffrons and my base is identical to theirs plus I know the ingredients in the Madras are the same as they use, plus I watched it being made. The first one I made came closest, the ones since seem to be floating further away. I wrote down everything at the time and published the recipe but I guess the method I saw was hard to put in writing.

I'm 99.9% sure our bases are as good as the average BIR. Lots of people here have tasted a restaurant base and reported it to be very similar to ours. Essentially no matter how many videos you watch or recipes you read they are almost all based around boiling up onions with a bit of extra veg and adding spices. The result is usually a thin lightly spiced onion soup. The key is in the cooking. If it was easy everyone would do it. The truth is most of the head chefs have been cooking curries for 20 - 30 years and will have been learning about spices since the age of about 3. They all cook by eye and instinctively know when to add which spice or garlic without burning it all. When I add garlic to hot oil it is usually black in about 30 seconds and needs to be binned and I start again. I'm not convinced there will ever be a Eurika moment when everthing suddenly comes together. I think practice makes perfect and most of us need about another 15 years practice.

Hi Chilli

Which method are you referring to? If you mean the video then which parts exactly did you follow? By leaving the onions to marinate in the spices for 4 hours and by double cooking them your results will be very different (and MUCH MUCH better) than hers would have been.

Also, good work with adding the potatoes. There seem to be a lot of people on here keen to knock the idea without even trying it. I have quizzed 5 indian BIR chefs about their bhajis, and all 5 include potato in them.

Have you done the second fry through yet? A couple of pics would be good if not. I hope they didn't colour too much on the first fry through if you were cooking them at 170 or 180 degrees. I find they brown in about 1 - 2 minutes like that.

I'd be interested to know if you added baking powder to your batter. I find this is often responsible for the bhajis breaking up instantly. If not then I would suggest your oil is possibly too hot. I cook mine at a maximum of 150 degrees. It means they can cook in the oil for 4 - 5 minutes without browning too much. I then take them out and leave them on the side for a few hours to cool at room temperature. This ensures the mix is nicely cooked all the way through.

I don't like the way she cooks them on the video above. They are basically sticky onion balls rather than a batter based bhaji. As mentioned previously you need a fairly thick batter (yoghurt is about right) so you can still form balls (or patties) in your hand.

Let me know what recipe you used. Contrary to popular belief bhaji cooking is a fine art. I've been trying to perfect them for months and I'm still only 90% there.

I 'think' what Mikka is trying to get at is that we shouldn't have one spice mix for all curries, rather the spice mix should be dynamic depending on the type of curry being produced. In his (poor) example he shows us a graph of the spices he believes should be in a Madras spice mix. Ideally () should be 0.25 tsp, ()()() 0.75 tsp, ()()()() 1 tsp and ()()()() ()()()() ()()()() 1 tbsp. I guess its a simple way for people (who don't understand basic fractions or measurements) to get the right quantities.

It is an interesting idea but won't lead us any closer to BIR utopia. In my experience the BIR chef will add varying proportions of turmeric, paprika, cumin, coriander and chilli powder depending on the curry being produced. For someone cooking a special curry at home it might be worth trying to work out the best balance of the 16 ingredients for an individual curry. I personally won't be investing any time in it.

Quote from: Mikka on December 09, 2009, 11:08 AM
who knows an indian who has a Daughter whose Dad runs a BIR

lol - so has this girl got 2 dads or is it the same bloke?

No but it looks like its part of quite a good series. It sounds like it was semi-professionally made in the 80's. Maybe for a late night program or something. It looks like the uploader had it on VCR. If anyone has any joy tracking it down i'd like to see it. It might give us some insight on curries of yesteryear.