Hi Secret Santa

With regard to the onion bhaji's

I know what's coming.... I can feel it....

The book provides as listed a recipe for.... wait for it.... a recipe using 4Kg of onions to produce 120 bahji's.

You know it, I know it, this is totally impractical for the home cook.

EDIT: The specific quantity required to achieve the BIR taste is not specifically stated. I would say it is implied by the first recipe quantity, but THB who knows. I would be guessing.

Instructions are provided to scale the recipe down, basically the gram flour weight should always be 1/4 the onion weight.

I massively scaled it down to produce around 12 bhajis and cooked them in around 3/4 litre of oil which was just enough to make the portion of base that the wife an I had to spend ages working out how to scale down.

But they were very nice. Although you could save yourself the bother of the scale down and just make the 'Covent Garden' ones from this site - can't now find link?

Vinegar? - In the Vindaloo?

Yes I did.

I think less is more, especially with the use of Vinegar. The author only specifies to use a cap-full for the whole portion and that is actually working very well.

I really think we need to get someone else with a little more experience than I to try some of this stuff now! I think the group will benefit from some more thoughts and opinions.

Thanks

Russell

Quote from: haldi on July 13, 2010, 06:01 PM

Quote from: solarsplace on July 11, 2010, 02:16 PM
Hi

Well, made the base and a monster portion of it too!
Russell

An interesting read
Did you use fresh oil?

Hi haldi

I did not use fresh oil. The book makes it absolutely 100% clear to the reader, that in order to get that BIR taste you must use the oil that has been used to cook the onion bahjis in. This is the oil that I used as per the authors spec.

FYI - I also made a mistake regarding my statements about how much tomato pur?e the author specifies for the Vindaloo.

The author does not specify 4 chefs spoons. He says 1 to 1.5 curry spoons.

The measurements are as follows:

1 curry spoon standard dip = 3/4 teaspoon

1 level curry spoon (scraped level, not tamped) = 4 teaspoons

1 curry spoon scoop = 10 teaspoons

So my previous post did the recipe a severe injustice and I apologise for misleading anyone.

This also means I put waaay too much tomato pur?e in my Vindaloo - but it still tasted really nice!

Hi Curry King

EDIT: I severely messed up the quantity of tomato pure quoted in this post. Please read further through the thread for the correction. Thanks.

Yes you are right, I made some observations about the base, but not the Vindaloo itself. Will try and correct that below.

Ok...

Made Vindaloo recipe to book spec with regard to ingredients. Did not add chilli flakes though because I did not have any. The ingredients were measured out by measuring spoons rather than chefs spoon 'dippings' where a standard 'dipping' is apparently 2/3 of a teaspoon.

Observations - far too much tomato pure is specified in the recipe - 4 chefs spoons - need to confirm - not got book to hand. Half the amount would be more than enough in my opinion.

The ingredients to turn the standard base into the Vindaloo are nothing new and quite basic, there are only a handful at that, such as some cumin, salt, chilli powder, vinegar etc, no black pepper.

The things that make the Vindaloo recipe for me to rate at this time i.e. a first cook above average is the solid base recipe with a good depth of flavor and the tomato pure with added ingredients such as tandori masala in it make a new change for me anyway.

So the bottom line is, the combination of a fairly strong base and a fairly light recipe make a nice garlicky, hot, tomatoey vindaloo.

It would also be correct to say that we also have base and recipe combos already on the site with heavy on one, light on the other and visa vera combos.

IMO at the moment, this book is not the be all and end all, but there are some interesting nuggets. Also I would say, that unless a reader has already been exposed to cooking from this site or one of the other curry secrets type books, they would really struggle to make the recipes. It needs a second edition with a fairly severe edit and re-wording.

It would be great to have others try out the recipes and report back their successes though! - its all too easy to be critical and negative of things like this.

Anyway, thats just my opinion, others may wish to agree / disagree, Hope that helps.

Hi Chris

Did you take any pics? - I always think a picture really speaks a thousand words, especially when it comes to curry's.

Thanks

Hi John

That sounds a fascinating tale full of history!

Do you currently cook much in the way of curry such as the Balti's you describe? any recipes or tips you could share?

Cheers

@all - thanks for the complements, but humble as I am, I just made someone else's recipe and if I can do it, then you all can do it!

Quote from: matt3333 on July 12, 2010, 08:23 PM
Hi Solarsplace
Great looking pictures, I also have the book and can't wait to try it out,
Did you make the vindaloo paste.
Cheers
Matt

Hi

As far as I understood it - and there is a lot of room for mistakes with this book! - the separate Vindaloo paste was not needed for the pure Vindaloo recipe. I got the impression it was a tool that could be added to the curry chefs arsenal to 'spice up' lesser spiced dishes etc. Therefore no, I did not.

However, I did make the tomato pure variation to spec. and did include a tsp of garlic powder too.

cheers

Hi

If in possession of the 'Undercover Curry' book, please see page 21 & 22 - hopefully you will find a correlation to the proportions listed here and to the ingredients specified for the recipe.

As already stated, everything made to specification, including re-used Bhaji oil. Point in main contention is the proportions and measurements thereof.

List#1
3kg into 11 litre stock pot
3/4
3x
1x
1x
10 desert spoons
1 can
4 desert spoons

List#2
All desert spoons:
4
4
4
4
4
4
2
optional = 1
several handfuls
3/4 litre
1.5 cups

Here are some pictures of the Vindaloo:



Same Vindaloo with the Palau rice recipe too (Sorry shop bought Bhajis - scoffed the ones made from the book already):



Obviously web sites don't do taste, but you always have to do the from refrigerator next day tests! - still has a nice consistence and not sitting in a lake of oil.



I would really value others opinions on the quantities of the ingredients used etc.

Happy cooking!

cheers

Hi

Don't know how the blooming cabbage escaped from the picture. I blame the wife because she took the picture!

I made it exactly to spec excepting the issue of the quantity scaling.

EDIT: Looking again more closely at the picture, not the full portion of everything is shown, this may have a been a worktop space issue, but TBH that picture was only meant as a bit of fun rather than to be analysed.

cheers

Quote from: Secret Santa on July 12, 2010, 03:44 PM
Looking at your pictures I can't see anything in there that you wouldn't find in most other base recipes. Would you care to give us an ingredients list for the base (without quantities to avoid copyright issues)?

Hi

You are probably quite correct in your observation that there are no particularly unusual ingredients.

There are two ingredients that in my admittedly limited experience are slightly uncommon in a base, these being asafoetida and cabbage, but that is about it.

What I had hoped to do was to post with reference to line items on the recipe page of the book, quantities of the ingredients that I used in the base, this is because the author does not really provide any accurate measurements for scaling the quantity of the base and it would be really helpful I think for readers to compare notes and opinions on this.

It is actually the proportions of the standard ingredients that are most interesting about the recipe! so by giving a list of ingredients, you would not be gaining any new knowledge.

Probably best to get a few more people trying the recipes, feeding back and then members can be in a more informed position to decide if they want to part with cash for the book.

cheers

Hi

I think everyone would certainly appreciate the spirit of your post, but you may need to seek permission from the owner before duplicating content from another site onto this forum?

http://www.natco-online.com/acatalog/Holy_Grail.html

cheers