Quote from: Bobby Bhuna on March 12, 2008, 11:36 AM

For me a good base is one which is tailored towards working well with most generic curry recipes. A base with no tomato is less likely to do this than a similar base with tomato.

The focus should never have been on the tomatoes, rather on the fact that two different bases using completely different spices cannot be used to judge which makes a better 3rd party curry :. Unless you're saying that the mix of spices in the base and the final curry have no relevance to each other (and if you do think that, then you're wrong, blend of spices is all important in a curry, it's what makes a curry what it is )

Tomato is also added in regard to personal taste, as is any ingredient :....If the saffron base would need modification to work with certain recipes, (whether that be the chilli, tomato, paprika or whatever else) it's certainly true of all bases as personal taste comes into play in everything, not to mention the curry recipe which you will be using to make a final dish, a point which you constantly refuse to accept. No doubt the tomato in the saffron base is an essential ingredient, otherwise I they'd bother to have it in there

I disagree strongly with you that a base needs tomato in it, as proof is given in the form of Darth's base, no tomato but certainly one of the resounding favourites if you read the posts on this forum. Missing or adding a half teaspoon of certain spices will greatly alter the final dish (i.e. substituting smoked for sweet paprika or vice versa).

The argument can be put just as strongly for either side, and forgive me if I say it, but I'm right, and you're wrong ;D If you do not modify a recipe to suit the base then you could end up with some real disasters, there are enough threads on this board dedicated to mishaps where ingredients have been substituted, missed altogether or excessive/inadequate quantities used : so what conclusion do we draw from this? it has to be that mixing and matching recipes does not always work and therefore a "one base that fits all" is a redundant ideal. :-X

Can you explain then why some curry houses use more than one base? Surely if they could get away with just the one, as you suggest, it would save time and maybe money too?

As has already been borne out on this board, getting members to agree on one base sauce of choice is impossible, and some of those bases are very similar in content ...this experiment shows one thing, that you obviously prefer the saffron base to Darth's....and no-one can say you're wrong, but in some of the principles you've put up as argument are flawed, as was the taste test imo.

Quote from: Bobby Bhuna on March 12, 2008, 08:44 AM
What I'm trying to say however, is that if you find yourself having to do this your base is not versatile enough. An ideal base should be subtle enough so that you do not have to account for it when cooking your final dish.

But with any base you have to take into account the ingredients used when making a curry from it? If I want a non-tomatoey curry, I'd hardly use a tomatoey base would I? By your own logic, Darths would be a better base to use as there is no tomato in it, making it more versatile when used across a range of dishes? The saffron base may be more bland, but it wouldn't work as well in hotter curries, so it would need to be modified in the curry recipe....agree?....Darth's base uses chilli, so to make mild curries from it you would have to omit the chilli....Saffron uses tomatoes, so won't work for non-tomatoey curries....now do you see my point? No matter which base you use you will always have to alter a final dish as per the base gravy bland or flavoursome, hot or mild....For a completely fair test, you would have to try every recipe against every base and compare results, you can't do it on a one-on-one, unrelated recipe-type test which you did in this case, as all three recipes were in some way bastardised by the others. : You can say which curry you may have preferred, but that gives no indication on the bases themselves really, as one recipe may just have happened to have a better mix of spices in the final dish due to certain ingredients being omitted by not being included in either the base or the madras recipe

There isn't a one-size fits all in base gravies....and I'm glad of that. Otherwise there would only need to be one gravy recipe, one bhuna recipe etc etc....and how boring would that be? Vive la difference! (pardon my French )

Quote from: Bobby Bhuna on March 11, 2008, 06:59 PM

Quote from: Domi on March 11, 2008, 06:34 PM
If Darths base does not contain tomatoes then it does not contain tomatoes. This does mean that I or anyone else should give it some special consideration while following generic recipes.

Whoops!!! I meant

This does not mean that I or anyone else should give it some special consideration while following generic recipes.

so you're saying that if a base gravy uses 1 tblsp chilli powder, and a curry recipe specifies the same (since it was designed for a different base in which chilli was omitted) you would add 2 tblsp, in fact doubling the quantity? I can't be the only one to think that that's wrong? : although it may be the cause of such varied replies to some recipes in which the base gravy has not been specified?

everybody changes recipes at some point SnS, even if it's just half a teaspoon of sugar vs a full one, it doesn't make a recipe less versatile, it just means it has to be altered in different ways to suit the cook

I always use a spoon for eating curries (or chappatis or naan for scooping up) ....maybe we're both mental SS? ;D

I thought Darth's posts make it clear that the base recipe is for vindaloos/madras's?

Quote from: Bobby Bhuna on March 11, 2008, 05:53 PM

Quote from: Domi on March 11, 2008, 05:42 PM
Darth's base doesn't, so is it not reasonable to suggest that this was not, perhaps a fair test?

If Darths base does not contain tomatoes then it does not contain tomatoes. This does mean that I or anyone else should give it some special consideration while following generic recipes.

Then why did you not add the tomato? You have just said exactly what I've been saying myself, that in order to make different curries using different bases, the ingredients have to be altered in order that the one suit the other or to suit your own personal taste? You can't miss out integral ingredients which is why this was not a fair test in my eyes.

Quote from: Bobby Bhuna on March 11, 2008, 04:53 PM

Yes Domi, but we're making curry from the base sauce, which will always contain tomato.

Darth's base doesn't, so is it not reasonable to suggest that this was not, perhaps a fair test? You still don't see my point BB.....If you want to compare the bases, then compare the base recipes themselves, it is unfair to judge them based on a curry recipe which is not designed around that particular base. If I wanted to judge a rajver madras against Darths, then I would need to follow both the rajver base and rajver madras recipe to do it justice just as to judge Darth's madras I'd have to use both his base and curry recipes, it's unfair to do it any other way. Obviously I can choose which base I prefer but simply replacing one base with another entirely different one can't work in my opinion....

You couldn't make a korma with Stew's base as it would be way too hot.

It's a bit like following 2 chocolate cake recipes.....if one recipe calls for the inclusion of the chocolate at say, stage 2, but the other recipe says to add at a later stage, say stage 6, but the recipe you actually follow veers away from Darth's method at stage 5 for instance, at what point would Darth's recipe actually become a chocolate cake? it wouldn't, would it? (as in Darth's madras recipe, the tomatoes are added at a stage which you omitted in your test as it is not present in the rajver version : ) Now do you get my point Bobby? Darth's base is versatile, but what versatility means is that it can be changed to suit many recipes, just as the recipes themselves would have to be modified for the base gravy.

Basically what I'm saying is if a base uses a heavier amount of one ingredient, say for example, chilli, then it is going to give a hotter result to the base sauce and obviously affect the flavour (or heat in this case) of the final curry made from that base. As such, when making a curry using a hotter base, I would take this into account when using a recipe which is not specifically used for that particular base, otherwise it would be too hot or not hot enough. Same with tomatoes, if a base does not have tomatoes in it but I'm making a tomatoey curry, the amount of tomatoes or tomato puree used in that final curry would have to be amended as per the base recipe.

I guess what I really mean is that a final curry recipe needs to be built around the ingredients used in a base gravy, not the other way around. Thus when I follow a curry recipe, I like to know which base sauce was used as it would or could dramatically change the taste of the resulting dish . The next time I make a recipe, I change it to suit my tastes, whether that be more tomatoes, chilli or whatever. I just think that when mixing and matching recipes, you must take into account the differences in ingredients, to leave out or put too much of something in somehow does no justice to either the base or curry recipe.

I mean, you could have left out the tomato from the saffron base since it was omitted from Darth's recipe, but then we'd be arguing that you'd not followd the saffron recipe and so the results were biased in some way towards Darth's base....Do you get what I mean?

Quote from: Bobby Bhuna on March 11, 2008, 04:25 PM

Quote from: smokenspices on March 11, 2008, 03:14 PM
Should we conclude from this (assuming that all or most are genuine BIR recipes), that there should be at least some tomato or tomato puree in the base recipe to fulfil the versatility requirement?

This would seem to be the case. It seems fairly obvious to me that most currys contain tomatoes in some form. In which case, it would save the BIR time to try and accommodate this in the base sauce, rather than having to add ingredients to each curry at the final stage.

I can understand the use of Tomato Puree at the final stage, as it helps with consistency and cooking the spices without burning them and also contributes to producing the BIR "toffee" smell.

I cannot however understand the use of Pasatta in the final stage dish. It would cool the pan down too much and waste cooking time. It's also more expensive than tinned tomatoes in my local supermarket. Finally, I never heard, from the many first hand BIR kitchen encounters on this site, of the use of Pasatta in curry cooking.

Taking this into account, coupled with the fact that we know that most curries contain a fresh / tinned tomato element, I have to conclude, as SnS suggests, the tomatoes must be added at the base sauce stage.

Again, I thin you're wrong...simply because a curry recipe must be built around the spices and ingredients used in the base.....A white sauce quickly becomes a mustard sauce, cheese sauce parsley sauce at the inclusion of one or two ingredients all of which dramatically change the final sauce...You wouldn't use parsley sauce in a lasagne....and there, I think, I rest my case ;D

Quote from: Secret Santa on March 11, 2008, 12:07 PM

There's no flies on you northerners eh?

No luv, only footprints where they've been

Quote from: Bobby Bhuna on March 11, 2008, 12:11 PM

I can't use Pasatta, because it's rarely used by BIR recipes on this site and for a base comparison I have chosen a simple, generic recipe. As I've said, I really can't see any fairer than that.

But surely you're making the same point as SS there Bobby....The rajver curry recipes are based on a blend of spices which compliment their base sauce, just as Darth's recipe for madras is built around the spices used in his base sauce, which proves exactly why you can't mix and match recipes sauce-to-base-wise as too much of or completely missing what may be an essential ingredient will drastically affect the resulting curry taste. If you can't use passata, then you're not following darths recipe, merely using it as a guideline