Thanks Mick and George, lol, there I go ordering the wrong size twice!

Oh well the 26 cm one is only a tenner. They are really solid pans with nice thick aluminium.

Cheers,

Paul

Hi Ray,

Can you tell me what size of aluminium pan you've got for cooking curries?

I ordered the 36 cm from the amazon link I posted but this is deffo too big.
Now I've ordered the 30 cm version (only 12 quid, no postage) and hope this is the right size. They do a 26 cm version as well.

I've been using a carbon steel wok but after watching loads of BIR video footage I reckon aluminium is the way to go. A thin steel wok just has too many hot spots.

Cheers,

Paul

I'm not sure if this is big enough for you:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Meyer-Commercialware-Aluminium-French-Skillet/dp/B001L1RGM2/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&s=kitchen&qid=1284219671&sr=8-16

I bought the 36 cm version but I think it might be a bit too big.

Lovely solid construction though, and where the sides meet the base is smooth and curved.

Paul.

Hi JerryM,

I made this almost to spec last week. By that I mean I only used 2 Tbs of mustard oil and 2 Tbs of normal oil. I was a bit nervous of the mustard oil as I had never used it before.

Anyway I thought the resulting tikka tasted as good as any other I have made and will use this recipe again. Thanks to Jb.

My only criticism and this is true of many tikka recipes is that the marinade is possibly too thick and cakey. Next time I'm going to try thinning the marinade maybe by using milk in place of some of the yoghurt.

I think for on-the-bone chicken the marinade would be just right but for bite-sized pieces of chicken it comes out a bit heavy.

Paul

Hi JerryM,

Glad to see you're back.

Cheers,

Paul 

I've also noticed the same problem with my chicken tikka. Last week I made Jb's chicken tikka and althought the taste was very good I found the cooked marinade was too thick and a little coarse.

Looking on the internet at recipes some of them use a mix of milk and yoghurt and appear to be much runnier than my marinade. Next time I might use a 50/50 mix of milk and yoghurt.

One other idea I'm not sure about: When BIRs make tikka do they marinade a whole breast, cook then chop up or do they cut the chicken first then marinade and cook?

I have tried both and I have found it works well enough to marinade the whole chicken breast, skewer and cook it whole and then cut into bite sized pieces. That way there is less surface area for the marinade and it makes for a lighter flavoured tikka.

On the other hand I think for a chicken tandoori recipe complete with bone the thicker marinade coating works well.

Paul

I normally fry the garlic or g/g in my wok, then take off heat, add diluted tom puree and spices and stir well . Then I get the wok back on heat and after probably around a minute I add some base and crank up the heat.

I've never seen a BIR chef on video frying powdered spices in just oil for any length of time. Even for a traditional bhuna the spices are fried with the meat. In this case the meat holds back the oil temperature, as does anything containing water.

I might be talking crap but I don't think powdered mixed spices will last long before burning if heated in just oil.

Paul.

Hi 976bar,

In my opinion the powdered spices cook just fine in a rapidly reducing oily mixture of base and oil. The Taz method uses this technique and the spices cook ok. I think the key is that there is oil present otherwise you would just be boiling the spices and the aromatic compounds won't dissolve in water.

In my "50 great curries of India" book the author goes into some detail about the frying times of the individual spices e.g. cummin, corriander, turmeric etc. How this applies to a mixture of these spices I really don't know and I think there are a lot of myths spread about Indian cooking.

I think where you do need to fry is when trying to brown garlic, or frying whole spices.

Paul.

Hi Ray,

Check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_oil

It might actually be good for you!

If BIRs use the stuff it will be the UK stuff labelled "for external use only" I'm pretty sure.

Cheers,

Paul

George, it may be worth having a look on Wikipedia or similar. I think there was an experiment years ago that showed that Mustard oil had a negative effect on rats.
I think it was later established that humans don't suffer from the same ill effects.

You cannot by law buy mustard oil for human consumption in the EU, USA, Canada, Australia etc, so you will never see a bottle labled for consumption in these zones.

I've got the KTC pure mustard oil and I'm not at all worried that it will harm me.

Paul.