I've just finished the Saffron Gravy recipe, and I must say it has produced the best BIR tasting curry for me so far.
Its only the third different base I have tried. The first was Darth Phalls, and the second one I dont recall the author (soz), but it included filling a 7 1/2 litre pot up with onions and infusing the oil overnight with spices and using a mooli root (excellent ingredient). Both have produced brilliant results, but after reading all the interest in the Saffron Gravy recipe; I thought I'd give it a try.
I didnt weigh the onions, but used fourteen medium english onions. I put in slightly more g&g - about two teaspoons. After adding the extra 1 litre of water,I was worried about the soup-like thickness of the sauce and the apparent lack of oil on the surface, so I continued the final vigorous simmering for an hour while I read a few more posts in this thread.
After leaving to cool down slightly, I scraped off the scum and I was amazed by how much oil had risen to the surface. I initially reclaimed the oil, but after further investigation I decided to stir it back in to the gravy and then bagged it up into 8 x 500ml portions. It looked beautiful in the bags- the oil created a lovely marbling effect ;D
I initially reclaimed about 400ml of oil from the 600 ml I started with.
One thing I have noticed from the recipe is that none of the spices are exposed to high cooking temperatures. (It makes me wonder if that is why there is such a tremendous depth of flavour to the finished dish).I then made a mild curry based on Curry Kings Lamb Bhuna Recipe using 2 medium onions, four lamb steaks pre-cooked as per Curry Kings recipe
https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=1915.msg16602#msg16602 ,half a green pepper and a chile. I fried the onion, green pepper and chile in 4 tablespoons of reclaimed oil + 4 tablespoons of fresh oil until the onion started to go brown, added 2 tsp fresh garlic + 2 tsp fresh finely chopped ginger 2 tablespoons of tomato puree (ever tasted this stuff? its sooo sweet), 4 tsp Bruce Edwards spice mix, 1 tablespoon salt, but the mix was too dry and started to stick to the bottom of the pan so I quickly added half a cup of water and the let it reduce down a bit. I then added half a ladle of gravy. Wow..... The smell was amazing. I then put a good pinch of coriander and a good pinch of some fresh methi from out of my freezer bag, and then slowly added the rest of the gravy one ladle at a time.I finished it off with 2 fresh tomatoes quartered. In fact it is almost identical to Curry Kings Lamb Bhuna Recipe!!! The curry had so much depth of flavour and the lovely sweet tang that reminded me of one of my old favourite BIR curries - a lamb masalla...well how a masalla used to taste some twenty or so years ago. IMHO they now all seem to have the same sickly - sweet bland coconut taste...yeeuch.
Thanks for the superb recipe sns
mick
