Nice post emin-j. Funny enough my wife prefers my traditional style Keema peas to my BIR dishes made with a base sauce. Much to my frustration!

It would be good if you could watch them cook it next time..... and post the details on here please.

Cheers,

Paul

Hi Panpot,

Yes I've also noticed JerryM hasn't been on the forum for some time. I suspect the bickering and arguments of late put him off posting or visiting this place.

I hope he comes back but a lot of people just seem to disappear from forums never to return.

Paul.

Micks's recipe looks very good - proper BIR style! It's making me hungry 

Paul.

Ive never had a chicken chasni but found this one:

http://www.currycouncil.com/2008/06/full-recipe-for-chicken-chasni.html

The recipe above doesn't use a base curry sauce so I would be a bit wary myself, but it seems that a chasni uses a mixture of tomato ketchup and mango chutney.

With a bit of experimenting you might be able to produce your own chasni.

Cheers,

Paul.

I've started to eat more lamb curries lately finding chicken sometimes a little boring.

Last weekend I bought a 12.99 Argos value slow cooker, partly inspired by a post by 976bar on using one.

I bought some spring leg of lamb for about ?6.50 and chopped it up into bite sized pieces. Then I briefly fried the pieces with some cinnamon, cardmamom, and bay leaf.

Then I stuck the mixture in the slow cooker with just enough base sauce (Dipu's recipe) to cover and slow cooked for about 5 hours.
Then I cooked a curry sauce in my wok and added the lamb and base mixture.


The resulting cooked lamb was melt in the mouth consistency - very tender and tasty.

I've tried shorter methods of pre-cooking lamb but have never got such tenderness before.

As an aside, I also added a single Natco dried birds-eye chilli to the frying oil and this was also transferred to the slow cooker. I retrieved the chilli after cooking as it was still whole. I couldn't believe the amount of heat that this tiny dried chilli had imparted on my curry and it nearly caused a bust-up with the missus! Compared to even hot chilli powder these things really pack a punch!

Paul.

Great post Stephen. I notice there's no garlic and ginger in this one. Sometimes less is more.

I haven't had a pathia for ages so I might give this a go soon.

Cheers,

Paul.

Thanks for that Mick.

Can anybody who has made the base sauce tell me whether they made the smaller volume as per the book or did they scale down the big one themselves?

Cheers,

Paul.

In the book he gives 2 different base recipes for a full batch and a small batch but by my reckoning they don't scale properly.

If you don't have the book and are considering buying it some of the differences I've noted from the recipes I normally use are as follows:

Use of onion bhaji oil in the base is a must have for the BIR flavour.
Use of cabbage in the base.
Use of a very large amount of asafoetida (hing) in the base.
No dried methi specified in any dish except the vegetable curry.
Use of tandoori masalla in many dishes as a main spice ingredient.
Use of tandoori marinade directly in some dishes.
No mix powder specified - just curry powder used.

The reference to "dipping" without giving more meaningful measurements is pretty frustrating for me.

I think I'll have to bite the bullet and buy a deep fat frier and learn how to make onion bhajis before I give this a proper go.

Paul.

Hi SS,

I know what you mean about the pure hing versus the cheap stuff - that could be a big variable in making the base sauce. I don't know whether you've got this book or not but it opens up a whole load of questions for me.

One thing I noticed was that the author states the garlic/ginger paste lasts for months in the fridge. That is not the case and is in fact dangerous without preservative. Much safer to freeze it.

Also when making the full sized base recipe what's all this stuff about not stirring and letting the spices sink and stick to the bottom of the pan?

Paul.

Hi Emin-j,

I've now got the book too. It raises many questions though.

Did you use the onion bhaji oil and if so roughly how many bhajis did you cook in it?

Secondly what size of base did you make and did you stick to the recipe quantities?

Finally what sort of hing did you use? The large quantities of hing specified seem like nothing else I've seen.

Cheers,

Paul.