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Quote from: chriswg on October 13, 2010, 01:47 PM
I use a saucepan and a sugar thermometer. You are only cooking at low oil temperatures so there is no danger of it igniting. Just make sure your hob has nice big sturdy stands on it (assuming it is gas).

Hmm, it's terribly disrespectful to disagree with a moderator, but (IMVHO) hot oil  and lit gas don't mix, so even if you are cooking at low oil temperatures, if the oil overflows and reaches the gas flame, I would not be surprised if it were to catch fire.  Play safe, never let it overflow !

(I speak from bitter experience : I was cooking crispy and aromatic duck in Canada, in front of guests; on lowering the duck into a saucepan containing hot oil, the oil overflowed and the flames nearly reached the ceiling.  Never since then have I used a saucepan in which to heat more than a very small amount of oil, far less than 1/3 of its capacity).

A wok that doesn't rock is useful for deep-oil frying, because it gets ever wider going from bottom to top.  So long as you don't overfill it (say, no more than 1/3 of its depth, but you can increase this with experience to maybe 1/2), the displacement of oil as you add the bhajis will be absorbed by the additional volume available at the top of the wok into which the oil is displaced. And if it does overflow and catch fire, don't panic : just turn off the heat, cover it with a wok lid, and the flames will eventually go out.  In no circumstances try to carry a flaming wok (or any other flaming cooking utensil) outside : horrible horrible accidents can occur if you try.

Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi swears by ajwain as an anti-flatulence agent.  Maybe suggest to your local BIR that they use more of it !

Ah, sorry, we in the South-East tend to forget that others might have an Old Street as well    The one I was speaking of is in London EC1 ...

Count me in, please Paul.  Kofte really is one of my favourite non-Indian dishes !

Does anyone (apart from myself !) remember eating "pie" in the Angel public house, Old Street, almost opposite the junction with Featherstone Street ?  And if so, what are your recollections ?  As far as I am concerned, the pie was out of this world, and it was by no means unusual for me to order a second portion, eaten with as much relish as the first, but try as I will, I cannot re-create either the flavour or the texture.  It was, I am fairly sure, a raised crust pie, but what were the ingredients ?  Was it just beef, and perhaps a small quantity of vegetables such as onion and potatoes, or did it include corned beef as well.  It was so moist, so tender, so wonderful ... !  I really would be grateful if any fellow "Angel" customers could help me get to the bottom of this dish, as re-creating it at home remains very very high on my list of culinary priorities.

I would go along with the current consensus : ever since I started using recycled oil (at all stages), there has been a significant improvement in flavour.  W.r.t. the hypotheses as to whether BIRs make it as a separate process or as a by-product, I would incline to the latter.  I think we all agree that an excess of oil is needed to make a good curry, and no BIR in its right mind is going to discard that oil as waste, so my bet is on "skimmings" becoming the recycled oil for the next batch.

I imagine it depends on how the garlic and ginger have been preserved.  The pre-bottled ones that I have tried (from See Woo in Charlton) use vinegar as a preservative, and you can detect that in the finished dish, although not necessarily detrimentally (by which I mean that there are some recipes for (e.g.) vindaloo that call for vinegar, so in such a dish it could be a plus rather than a minus so long as you remember to reduce the quantity of explicitly added vinegar).

It would be interesting to know which spelling checkers automatically replace "aubergine" by "aborigine" !