Hi Guys,

That recipe was from when I had a chef round to my place for a lesson.

I've since worked in a restaurant and been making the gravies while there and at times cooking the dishes when things got busy to assist the chef.

A different recipe for the Rogan Josh which is what I have always tasted as Rogan Josh is below, however most will not know it as such when looking at how the Ashoka Rogan Josh gravy got treated.

Here is how we make it in the restaurant...

2 parts onion gravy
1 part butter gravy
little water to adjust consistency
1/2 tsp tamarind concentrate
1 tsp sugar
pinch mace powder
small pinch/sprinkle nutmeg powder
1 pinch salt ( to taste)

We use multiple curry gravies to make the end dishes, the gravies have a fair amount of spicing in them so at the end very little is added. Pinch of this, pinch of that etc, which just finishes off the dish and sets each apart. Each of the gravies have different spicing so this too makes different dishes taste, well different, and when gravies are combined, different again.

The butter gravy for example has methi in it, for Rogan Josh, not additional methi is added, its not meant to be a dominant flavour of the dish, but it is in there. But for Butter Chicken which is by far the most popular dish here it is added.

Butter Chicken here though is quite different to what I see from the UK recipes as ground cashews are a key ingredient/flavour in the dish but hardly seem to be mentioned in any UK dishes.

It's amazing what you learn from chefs, who would have ever expected that custard powder is used in some dal dishes! I took some dal home from a different restaurant that I help out in and my wife commented about how creamy it was, I asked her if she wanted to know what it was, at first she was a bit worried, but I assured her it wasn't bad but just completely unexpected.

Cheers,
Mark

Hi Phil,

Can't say what happened in the past or in another country, but here in Australia in the restaurant that I work in, the beef is precooked in a very simple way. The beef, some ginger, couple of spices, salt and water and that's really it.

When the beef is ready, ie butter knife soft, it is removed from heat and placed into the storage containers in the cooking liquid/stock.

When the end dish is made, approx 6-8 pieces of beef are taken, along with a couple of chefs spoons of the stock. This imparts the flavour and is a noticable difference if it is not there. The same thing happens with the precooked chicken, lamb, goat and roo.

Cheers,
Mark

Hi All,

With all the posts about others around the world getting together for bbq's I thought I'd put this out there.

If anyone's in Brisbane and interested in going to/trying different Indian restaurants around the place to meet up have a curry and a beer(ale) or two then let me know.

Depending upon how things go other activities could be organized.

Cheers,
Mark

Hi Ray,

I've got a great Rogan Josh recipe, bit it is Australian and it involves using multiple gravies.

It is a tested and tried recipe that I have done at home, along with in the  restaurant where I work preparing gravies.

However my Rogan Josh will inevitably be very different from what your Rogan Josh expectation is from the sounds of it. Even round here in Brisbane there are huge differences, some with yogurt, some with cashew, some with coconut, and some with lentils.

Cheers,
Mark

Sure, here it is, they may only be in Australia though, not sure.

http://www.allindia.com.au/

There should be something similar though in other parts, when the chef was telling me about it he said it was a commercial paste rather then what you would get in the supermarket/grocery store.

Hi,

Take the opportunity and give it a go, you might be surprised and learn something new, got to beat guessing what they do doesn't it.

You might also find that it's not so much about them guarding things either.

The first IR kitchen I went into for lessons we made a cut down version of their base which we then made a number of dishes from. I asked to take a sample home from their normal big pot base home to compare with to make sure I was doing fine.

Oh, I also went their the Sat night before and ordered a number of dishes that we would make so that I could know their take on the dishes and ensure that what we made in the lesson was the same.

Went home and followed the recipe but it wasn't quite right. So I rang them up, talked to the chef and asked if I could come in and watch the big pot process from start to finish to work out where I had gone wrong. Next Sat I went in and found out exactly what I did wrong, it was actually a miscalculation on the cut down version, and went home and could produce exactly the same thing!

I also learnt too that using the Ashoka brand of Vindaloo Paste which I had in the fridge did not produce the same dish as using the Lashand Vindaloo Paste that the restaurant uses even though they had the same ingredients. So guess what I did, I went out and bought the Lashand Vindaloo Paste, all 5kg of it as it is made just for restaurants, lucky I like Vindaloo!

These things and many more I learnt in there which would never have come up without going in.

Cheers,
Mark

Hi,

Unless you can get in with a chef to his restaurant and watch/participate in the process from making the gravy to the actual dishes it is pretty much a never ending holy grail type thing.

Having had both chefs out and been in kitchens and now making gravies at one restaurant I can say going in is the only way to achieve what you want at home.

How I got hold of chefs was to search for restaurants doing lessons and ask if they were doing restaurant style in their kitchen. I also contacted any chefs who had placed ads in a local free classified site and asked if they would be willing to teach until they found some work.

I know JB had someone to his house and also went into a restaurant for lessons. In their kitchen, they are in their element and there is no stress for them, ie they know where everything is, spices, tools, pots/pans and are familiar with them. One chef I had at my place had never used a ceramic electric stove and struggled immensly with getting the cooking temp he wanted etc.

Yes, it cost me, and quite a bit, but the cost was far better then the frustration of cooking only to be disappointed with the end result. My wife and family were very happy with the dishes, but for me it wasn't quite there and that bugged me.

In the end, it's a very easy process once you know what you're doing and the only real way to know what you're doing is to follow someone who knows what they're doing.

Also too, if you find a place that is willing to teach, eat their dishes for a while so that you are ready for them to taste that way rather then at your local which will most likely have a slightly different or perhaps vastly different taste.

Cheers,
Mark

Unfortunately I can't comment on something I haven't tried, not having been to the UK for more then a flight change through Heathrow.

What I have attempted to make from various site recipes and vids is very different to what is served here in Australia.

I can however cook the dishes from the restaurant at home and have it come out the same as in the restaurant. For me, I don't need to try anything else now, very similar to the member who went to the Ashoka and got their recipes and spent time in the kitchen, for him he found what he was after and able to recreate.

Hi Phil,

I work in a IR here in Australia one day a week and prepare the gravies on that day that are used for the rest of the week.

We  cook our base gravies for approx 2-3 hours. Once they are cooked they go into a fridge and are used as required.

When a dish is being made for a customer, the gravy is taken from the fridge and added to the pot at the appropriate time with the other ingredients.

The onion cooking part of the gravy making process takes a good 2 hours, this you might find interesting, no water is added to the onions while cooking. They slowly cook and caramelize for the two hours along with a couple of whole spices and the smell is absolutely amazing while cooking and nothing like the boiled approach. Oh and another surprise, no such thing as mix powder either!

Again this is a major difference to BIR, the chef said he would never boil onions for a gravy though, so different techniques are out there but these curries are amazing and I can reproduce them at home.

My advice, if you can, get into a restaurant either working part time, or see if you can get part time lessons in a restaurant.

There are a few others on the site who have been able to get into restaurants as well and it is where you pick things up properly, can ask questions etc.

While the above process works for me to be able to recreate the curries at home, it may not work for you in that you are looking to re-create tastes from your local restaurant and their processes/mixes will be different.

Unfortunately we all  have preconceived notions of what dishes are supposed to be. I remember there was a lot of surprise when the Ashoka Rogan Josh gravy revealed that it had coconut and I think almonds in it, and how could Rogan Josh have that in it. Here in Aus, most of them do, others don't so to one person what is Rogan Josh is completely different to what others know as Rogan Josh. How about this Rogan Josh descriptionn from one restaurant close to my place...

Rogan Josh - $16.90
Chef's special creation. Chicken is simmered with lentils, with the added flavours of Cardamom and fresh garlic. A spicy exotic curry of the Kashmiri style.

I've never seen/read/experienced lentils in a Rogan Josh, but this place does it and that's their version.

In any case, if you can get into a restaurant to work/take lessons, then at least you can order a dish from that place taste it, get the chef to teach you how to make it and then reproduce at home. It may taste completely different from the dish from your local, but you will have learnt that dish from their perspective.

Cheers,
Mark

Hi Phil,

Here in Australia it is very different, I've been in two restaurants, still in one of them and had a couple of chefs out to my place for some lessons.

None of them use gravies the consistency I see in the vids/recipes on the site. And none of them use just one gravy to make all their dishes either. This could be due to these being restaurants where you dine in and have a small takeaway market compared to pure takeaways perhaps in the UK. Our curry market here is nothing like the UK.

All of them use very thick pastes which water is then added to at the dish making stage. This provides a concentrate gravy/gravies which take less room in the fridge, and for us at home in the freezer.

Stock is not added per se, however the pre-cooked meat(chicken/lamb/beef) when added does have some of the cooking liquid with it, so there is some additional flavor that comes through from that being added.

And being a smaller quantity when defrosting and having less water amount in it, does unfreeze a lot quicker.

Regards,
Mark