This Jalfrezi was quite thick, which is the odd thing, even though the base sauce is thinnish the final dishes do turn out quite thick. They reduce the sauce under high heat.

I used to use a method extremely similar to this but I think the curry house cookery method produces better results 

Hi Paul

>could i just ask whether the base sauce was the thin yellowy sort as only one ladle is used at the end.
It was of the thinnish yellow variety.

>and were there no green peppers in this version?
There werent which I was suprised at as jalfrezi tends to come with them (maybe he forgot to put them in? ;D). If I were to make this I would add them precooked at the chicken stage. To pre cook them I would fry them very gently in oil with a teaspoon or so of restaurant masala and a bit of garlic.

>I am interested as my local restaurant does an excellent tikka jalfrezi that i cannot emulate despite having been told how to do it by them and
>seen them cook it.
Please describe what you saw and what they told you

> they used a chip fryer to cook the onions and peppers and added them in at the same stage as the
> Chepstow version. The chilli were added at the end so as to keep the curry as a medium rather than a hot.
Fair enough, I reckon Jalfrezi is a hot dish.

>Do they always cook with chopped garlic rather than the pureed sort.
Yes from the 2 kitchens I have been into.

>also on the subject of the marinade do you know whether they use pataks paste mixed with yoghurt or make their own.
I dont know but I have found the chicken tikka method described in Pete's curry house cookery ebook to be the best so i would use that.

>perhaps you could ask next time you go in
Will do

OK, another demo, same place as the Pathia and as you might expect very similar method.

Cooked on a very high heat all the way through

Start with about 4 TBSP veg oil
Add 1-2TSP chopped garlic
Cook garlic until starting to brown
Add about 4 TBSP pre cooked onions and 2-4 chopped fresh green chillis
Cook for about half a minute.
Add 2-3 TSP tomato puree (pasata, not concentrate)
Cook for half a minute
Add 1.5 TSP restaurant masala, 1.5 TSP chilli powder, 1 TSP fenugreek leaves, 1/4 TSP salt
Cook for half a minute
Add precooked chicken tikka and a wedge of fresh tomato.
Cook for 1 minute stirring, add 1-2TBSP fresh coriander
Add one ladle curry sauce, cook for a further 2-3 minutes.


I asked the chef how long he marinaded his chicken for to make chicken tikka, he said about 8 hours which surprised me as I expected it to be around 2-3 days.

I suspect the restaurants use nothing more than the following to make virtually every curry:

Curry powder (I use the restaurant masala from the curry house cookery in the ebook section)
Chilli powder
Salt
Sugar
Lemons (whole or juice)
Garlic paste
Ginger paste
Pasata
Fresh coriander
Fenugreek leaves (dried)
Ground almonds
Creamed coconut
Single cream

food colourings

The Pataks pastes IMHO are great and thats what they should have stuck to.

Pasata, they are definately using pasata and not concentrated tomoatoe puree in the 2 kitchens I have been in.

Just made CTM this weekend, it was awesome, as good as my local restaurant.

I used both the base sauce and the chicken tikka recipe from Pete's Curry House Cookery. The chicken tikka was the best I have ever made and I only marinaded it for ~6 hours, I expect it would have been far more tender had I done so for 24-48 but it was still tender and very tasty.

I got my oven up as high as it would go and cooked the chicken tikka for about 20 minutes suspended on skewers, the only difference was I didnt do part where he puts poppy seeds and fresh corander on it. Also I only used 4 TBSP oil, only 2 of which were mustard oil.

They would have been using Pataks paste, sounds like you bought pataks sauce instead. When I popped down my local Tesco I see they are no longer stocking the balti paste (and many others), seems like the use of pastes is on the way out. Instead they ahd shelves of curry sauces that you wouldnt even feed to a dog

Did you precook it? I suspect meat like this would need about an hour to get tender