Quote from: joshallen2k on October 24, 2010, 07:56 AMThat's one ugly dude.

Well, until you post a picture of yourself, we shall just have to assume that this is a classic case of the (curry) pot calling the kettle black !

Quote from: haldi on October 18, 2010, 07:45 AMThanks for you reply.  You've told me everything I needed to know.  I took the said deep pan fryer back, and will consider which brand to buy next.  The last one was made by Asda.  I will check the next one with a thermometer when I get it.  Thanks again

You're very welcome.  I haven't cooked papadum since you replied, but I did this evening, and took the opportunity to check the temperature at which they cooked best.  This was indeed 375F/190C, as previously reported; at 180C they are too oily, at 200C they go brown too quickly.

** Phil.

Just cooked Dave Loyden's pulao rice from Undercover Curry, and was very surprised to find that his "don't wash the rice" method is a complete success    I followed his instructions up to and including the point of adding milk, but was uncertain just how much milk to add (Dave writes "pour in enough milk to make it bubble up"), but that really gave me no idea how much, so I added some (enough to see it bubble up) but nowhere near enough to cover the rice.  I have now sought his advice on this and will report back.  I then added the spices and water (water by eye, not by ratio), brought it to the boil, allowed it to cook for a few minutes and then transferred it a covered pyrex casserole dish and transferred it to the microwave oven, which is how I normally prepare rice.  It needed a further eight minutes on full power, after which I added about a dozen drops of food colouring (yellow, red, green) and then put the casserole dish into the pre-warmed top oven where it remained until we were ready to eat.  The results were excellent, with every grain firm and separate, and a real "pulao" taste/feel/smell to it (my test is to eat it with lime pickle alone : if it goes well with that, it is a good pulao rice).  My wife says that it would have benefited from a little salt and ghee, and I may try adding those next time.  But for those who, like me, have always believed that basmati rice must be washed and soaked first, try this method : I think you will be very agreeably surprised !

** Phil.

P.S. Having now read this thread in its entirety, I am surprised that no-one has yet linked to an image of the author : http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/driver-delivers-the-secrets-of-the-perfect-curry-1.746915?referrerPath=news

Just one comment :

Quote from: JerryM on October 23, 2010, 01:23 PM
2) I don't agree that an excess is needed (defined as more than a hint of oil on the surface or small amount of pooling). at my local TA if an "excess" occurs which don't seem that often (observing from the counter) the chef skims off the excess into a tin (from the frying pan)

In my experience, it is almost a case of "the more oil the better", in the sense that the flavour improves as the excess of oil increases up to some (unknown) limit, but as a matter of course I remove (and recycle) most of that "excess oil" before serving, although on the last occasion I left all the oil in and the dish was none the worse for that (but we were serving ourselves direct from the pressure cooker, so it was easy to pour back excess oil from the ladle when helping oneself).  I am reasonably confident that most of my failures [1] have resulted from using insufficient oil.  When I re-spice a take-away curry that has failed to meet my expectations, I invariably add extra oil during the re-spicing process which is then skimmed off again before serving.

[1] The other failures have occurred when the final curry is too thick.

** Phil.

Quote from: Vindaloo-crazy on October 22, 2010, 08:55 AMWe moved to Tassie 18 months ago. Great site for curry this though.

Ah, that would explain your earlier reference to prices in dollars; I assumed (clearly wrongly) that you were resident in America : all is now forgiven   I spent a long weekend in Tasmania in 1987, mainly visiting the South West wilderness, but I could not stay there for the whole weekend so decided to move on to Queenstown.  Never have I felt so devastated in my whole life : having just left the vibrant, fertile, primeval rain forest, Queenstown was like a vision of hell -- 25 square miles of sterile nothingness : no birds, no grass, not a living creature anywhere.  Cancelling my reservation, I drove out of there like a bat out of hell, and finally ended up in Strahan on the Gordon River, but I will never forget to my dying day the nightmare that was Queenstown.

Reply to PaulP, added above to avoid increasing my total number of O/T posts : I think it was primarily mining, Paul : WP has this to say -- "Owing to a combination of tree removal for use in the smelters, the smelter fumes (for about 40 years), and the heavy annual rainfall, the erosion of the shallow horizon topsoil back to the harder rock profile contributed to the stark state of the mountains for many decades."

Kris Dhillon now lives in Australia, on a former sheep station in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, about 250km west of Sydney near the city of Orange (http://www.krisdhillon.com/) : you could always call in for some advice  ;D

Quote from: Secret Santa on October 22, 2010, 08:32 AM
Rabbit? Where did you get that idea from? I doubt very much that rabbit has ever seen the inside of any BIR, at any time, past or present.

I fully agree, rabbit is probably completely alien to BIR cuisine.  None the less, as I explained when I first mentioned rabbit some weeks ago, the idea came to me when I wanted to make a curry and had no pre-made base sauce; what I did have was the remains of a rabbit pie (rabbit bones, stock, leeks and lemon).  I therefore improvised, pureed the leeks in lieu of onions, added sufficient rabbit stock to achieve the desired consistency and then basically followed KD's methodology thereafter.  The results were superb -- easily as good as any I have achieved using a purist BIR approach -- and so I now include leeks and rabbit stock in my BIR chef's armoury, to be used whenever appropriate.

** Phil.

P.S. In some parts of the country, wild rabbit probably represents better value (i.e., costs less per pound) than chicken, so I would not entirely rule out the possibility that some of the more rural yet enterprising BIRs have already incorporated rabbit into their recipes.

Although this is getting a long way from the real subject of this thread, I am starting to think that perhaps our collective obsession with re-creating the perfect BIR is a little bit anally-retentive.  Surely the major breakthrough came with the revelation (by Kris Dhillon and others) that the one thing that differentiates a BIR curry from an authentic Indian curry is that the former derives its texture, and a significant part of its taste, from a base sauce in which finely pureed onion forms a major part, and from the use of an excess of oil when cooking the finished dish.  Once we have accepted that, all else is just the icing on the cake : recycled oil, chicken stock, asafoetida (hing), "secret" spices mixes and so on -- all will make a difference, but as (almost) each and every one of us has developed his/her taste for BIR curries by exposure to different restaurants and take-aways, there can be no one recipe that will seem perfect to all.  My first exposure to curries came about 45 years ago, and it did not take me long to realise that every Indian restaurant would produce a different flavour for the same name.  Similar, yes, but not the same.

So whilst I am as enthusiastic as any member of this forum in wanting to achieve the perfect curry, I no longer believe that "perfect" necessarily means "identical to those served at the Taj of Kent" (today) or "identical to those served in the Maharaja of Chislehurst" (45 years ago).  Maybe yesterday's curry, made primarily with rabbit and chicken stock, wasn't identical to a curry from the Taj of Kent. but it was as good, and as tasty, and met all of my criteria for success, the main one being that I wanted to carry on eating the sauce with the chapati long after all the chicken had gone !

** Phil.

Quote from: moonster on October 21, 2010, 11:43 AMyou are right mate, it would be prudent of me to wait and see, if and what JB comes back with regards to the chicken bones before trying them in Razors base. I would be purely guessing if i was to try it now.

On the subject of bones, last night's curry here was made using a combined rabbit/chicken stock (with an excellent flavour all by itself).  I sauteed 1 1/2 large onions, half a carrot, half a dozen cloves of garlic, added the stock and cooked in a pressure cooker whilst I went out to buy some ginger.  When I got back the stage-1 sauce was ready, so I added some very thinly sliced ginger and pureed everything.  That then went back on the stove with one teaspoon turmeric, one teaspoon paprika, a decent squeeze of tomato puree (about 40g, looking at how much is left in the tube), all the oil left over from the previous curry plus some new grapeseed oil, and the whole then simmered for about 20 minutes.  Diluted it a little with boiling water, added the pre-cooked chicken, Bassar curry masala and salt (2 teaspoons and 1 teaspoon respectively), cooked for about eight minutes, added one teaspoon cumin, 1/2 teaspoon fenugreek and 1/4 teaspoon coriander, cooked for a few more minutes and served.  Very very pleasant but a tad under-spiced (I had held back on the Bassar curry masala because the recycled oil was very hot, but that meant that I also had to hold back on the cumin, etc., so in the end it was slightly less spicy than I would have preferred).  My wife commented that it would benefit from a little garam masala, which I tried, but I wasn't convinced it added anything other than body and a sense of "warmness" on the palate.  What remains of the sauce will be re-used to cook a second curry with fresh chicken and extra spices.

** Phil.

Quote from: solarsplace on October 21, 2010, 11:26 AM
There has been a 'bit of banter' about the Undecover book already over here https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=4776.0 if you are interested. Cheers

Bl@@dy h@ll : "a bit of banter" -- 33 pages, by my reckoning ! Many many thanks, I shall digest that lot at my leisure before writing another word on the subject 

** Phil.