Quote from: Cory Ander on January 20, 2010, 12:10 AM
Posted by peterandjen and moved to here by CA

I've got a fool proof, works every time no matter how many servings, Pilau rice recipe : have a gander. (recipe snipped)

OK, tried this twice now.  The first time I followed your quantities and timings exactly, and found that the rice was not fully cooked, so had to continue cooking until ready.  The results were OK but not as good as I'd hoped.  On the second occasion (yesterday), I used your exact methodology but modified the quantities, timings and spicing in accordance with my own experience and judgement.  This time the results were out of this world : I have never achieved anything like this before.  Pilau rice that was light, fluffy, rounded, smooth, every grain separate (without any trace of greasiness) and with a real "BIR Pilau Rice" flavour.  Thank you so much for posting this : my rice will never be the same again !

After several years of faithfully following Kris Dhillon's method for preparing the base sauce and final curries (albeit doubling both the quantity of sauce per unit of meat and also doubling the quantity of spices in the sauce), I finally felt I understood the basic ideas well enough to try an alternative approach.  The main disadvantage of KD's methods, to my mind, is the long time needed to prepare the sauce, and it was this that I set out to address.  I decided to make just enough curry for a meal for one, so used one onion, one clove of garlic and one index-finger top-joint of ginger.  All were chopped finely, then gently saut?ed in ghee until very soft.  I then added sufficient boiling water to yield my target volume of curry sauce, and simmered gently for about half an hour.  I then transferred the sauce into a pyrex jug and immediately liquidised it using a Bosch hand blender.  It was clear that the sauce would be of the right consistency.  I reserved about a tablespoon of the stage-1 sauce for the first-stage cooking of the chicken, then transferred the remainder of the sauce back to the saucepan, added a little turmeric and paprika (about half a teaspoon of each), added sufficient groundnut oil to ensure that the spices would cook at the right temperature, and then brought the sauce back to a gentle simmer.  I added sufficient tomato pur?e (but no liquidised peeled plum tomatoes) to achieve the right colour and flavour, then gently cooked the stage-2 sauce for a further 20 minutes.  While the sauce was gently simmering I prepared the chicken as per KD, and basically followed KD's method for preparing the final chicken madras but with double the volume of sauce and double the quantity of spices per unit of sauce.  All was ready within two hours of starting, and was (as far as I was concerned) virtually identical to the flavour that had previously taken 24 hours to achieve (it was certainly not inferior to the 24-hour version in any way). 

So, if you want to achieve a KD-style curry in considerably less time than her method would normally take, you might like to try the method above.  Let me know if you do, and how it turns out.

Quote from: TRAVELMAN on September 25, 2006, 04:36 PMGuys/gals-would you skim off? As Approx 4 tablespoons goes in each curry would think some/nearly all should be skimmed off??!

Almost always.  The only exception is when re-heating a previous day's curry, which I do by heating some ghee in a wok, throwing in the leftover curry, and then adding a little water or stock if it looks too dry; in those circumstances (and assuming you don't use too much ghee !), then I find that the added ghee helps to give the curry a nice glossy look without adding unwanted greasiness.

Quote from: CurryCanuck on September 21, 2006, 01:35 AMYour only dilemma  - which beer do I serve 

What a good question !  Although I suspect the following will be of minority interest, I'll post it anyrate ...  As someone who has enjoyed a beer or a glass of wine with a meal for as long as he can remember, it was a sad day for me when my liver consultant advised me that alcohol was no longer an option : I could either continue drinking, or die.  At the time, my consumption was about one 660ml bottle of 5% beer per day (with dinner). which is modest by almost anyone's standards, but according to the consultant it was still far higher than my liver could tolerate, and it had to be reduced to as near zero as possible.  I then started a search for good alcohol-free beers (K@l1b@r is about the worst alcohol-free beer in the world, IMHO), and after sampling almost everything that Beers of Europe had to offer under their "Low/no alcohol" category , I finally homed in on two : Clausthaler Extra Herb, and Main Thaler.  Now I know that low/no alcohol beer is not of interest to many, but do please give these two a try, even if you're able to consume as much alcohol as you could want : I think you'll find them very pleasant, very drinkable, and (as far as I am concerned), indistinguishable (apart from the after-effects) from the very best full-strength bottled German beers ...

Quote from: Panpot on September 04, 2006, 10:48 AM
Can Anyone recommend some good Stores in London to brouse and stock up an spices,goodies etc. I am visiting on Wednesday and Thursday. Thanks

Panpot

Drummond Street, just behind Euston Station, has not only the best kebab house in London (well, maybe one of the two best, the other being Lahore 1 in Commercial Road) but also a first-class Indian grocers and an Indian desert shop plus several related enterprises ...

Quote from: Yellow Fingers on September 15, 2006, 11:04 AM
Bloody hell Stew, that's a bit harsh.

Yes it was wrong, yes it was annoying and yes he/she shouldn't have done it, but unless I've missed other similar posts this is the first time that it's been done. I thought the info was interesting and appropriate if posted in the right forum - and only once. Give the poor bugger the benefit of the doubt, issue an appropriate warning and then if/when they do it again ban them to hell and back.

I hope this isn't the shape of things to come, i.e. banning without warning.

YF

I support "Admin" here; I used the "Report to Moderator"  button on finding six instances of the same message, and I think that Admin's reaction was appropriate in the circumstances. It's very hard to imagine how it could have been an accident, or even the result of a misunderstanding, IMHO...

Quote from: CurryCanuck on September 15, 2006, 03:19 AM
Hmmm...paprika...interesting concept.... an ingredient that is used in central Europe & Spain but not often seen in Indian cooking . I have been a strong proponent of Bruce Edwards....but  do have my doubts - do you use hot or regular paprika . This would ultimately influence the dish....or would you be better served adding more chilies . Yet another indication of  how the end user has to both formulate and adjust recipes . Must admit that I have always omitted paprika and substituted chili powder . Chaa006 what  do you think ?

I use hot paprika if I have it, and standard otherwise; in both cases, the flavour of the raw spice is noticeably different to that of ground chillies, which are themselves difference to cayenne pepper and so on ...  I have a recipe for chicken piri-piri which requires both ground chillies and ground cayenne pepper (as well as ground ginger and ground black pepper), so I suspect it's not uncommon for a recipe to require two or more members of the same spice family in the same dish.

Quote from: lagathy on September 14, 2006, 10:35 PM
I've always been a bit disappointed with kd's recipes...although doubling (at least) the quantities of spices he recommends does help a bit.....one thing I've never been sure of...are you supposed to blend the resulting green coloured water along with the boiled onions..or drain it and just blend the onions??

Blend everything : water, onions, ginger, garlic; the resulting liquid is the "Stage 2" sauce, in which you can pre-cook the chicken (with a little turmeric and some oil or ghee), and later go on to make the "Stage 3" sauce, adding oil, tomatoes, tomato puree, turmeric and paprika ...

Quote from: DARTHPHALL on June 19, 2005, 09:22 PM
Stop using food coloring aaaaghh.
If you want Yellow use a little Turmeric, guaranteed to stain the insides of a Concrete Elephant !!! ;D ;D ;D

I always use egg yellow when making omelettes (esp. for Chinese fried rice), but to colour the Tandoori "yellow sauce" I gently cook a little turmeric in oil.  This takes the earthy edge off the flavour (which I otherwise find somewhat unpleasant) and deepens the colour slightly.  The sauce needs only a little turmeric, and the turmeric itself needs very brief cooking in non-too-hot oil ...

Quote from: chillidoggy on May 03, 2006, 10:49 AM
Hello.

I have had the Khris Dhillon book for absolutely years, I guess since about '84 or so.  I made the curry gravy only yesterday but have not yet used it in a recipe.  Thing is, it just smells and tastes a bit bland and the recipes in the book don't look like they're going to hit the mark.

Anyone else found this or have any comments? ...

Well, I've posted twice in KD's defence, so clearly I believe his base has something to offer, but I also know that I no longer use his recipes "as written".  In general, I use twice as much sauce per unit of meat as he recommends, and twice as much spice per unit of sauce.  I also add other spices that he doesn't explicitly mention.  But I do think that his is an excellent starting point, and has the great merit that you aren't going to blow the roof off your mouth using his quantities of spices, so you are (IMHO) more likely to experiment thereafter rather than just give up ...