Quote from: livo on September 05, 2022, 12:49 AMSo, at Al Frash you can buy the straight Balti dishes, but you can also order the "usual" restaurant curry dishes like Butter Chicken, Passanda, Rogan Josh, Korma and the like, and add this additional preparation to the Balti.  Is that how it works?

I think that is how it works livo. The balti is essentially a curry made just with just the balti base sauce. And thus how can it be anything other than bland? And the "normal" BIR curries are essentially standard BIR fare but using the balti base, which is what we balti virgins are finding very palatable.

Quote from: Lahore Bob on September 04, 2022, 09:43 PM
Just made another Balti chicken with the MDB base.  First impressions.  Another trouser-exploder.  Off the chart depth of flavour, with no further additions, except a pinch of salt. 

I can only conclude that to profess such fulsome praise on such a bland balti you must have added a secret ingredient. Acid maybe?

Nice to see he reads this forum. Or is it just pure coincidence he's making balti as our balti thread is in full swing. And, really, he should have used mince in that curry.

Quote from: livo on September 04, 2022, 03:27 AMOne possibility could be the quality / freshness of the spices they are able to obtain due to their higher turnover.  Perhaps buying commercial quantity packages is key to obtaining the best quality and freshest spices.  I guess you could go and buy a set of new (fresh???) spice packs and do side by side comparison with what you already have in the spice cupboard.  Cook the exact same dish with old and new spice to see if it changes much.

The right way to do it would be to buy the spices whole and as fresh as possible and grind them just before making the curry. I did this some forty years ago now and made a side by side comparison with pre-ground but fresh spices and I couldn't detect any distinct difference in the finished curries so never fresh-ground spices again. And really, as long as you're not using spices that are months old, I just don't think freshness is an issue.

Quote from: Robbo141 on September 03, 2022, 02:51 PM
I have to agree about the secret ingredient not existing. We've all seen multiple videos shot inside British Indian restaurants and that chefs use the spices we all know too.

You're right, there are many videos around now, but they represent the lacklustre curries from the nineties onwards. And, yes, anyone can replicate those from recipes on this forum so there's no secret ingredient. But compared to the curries I had in the very late seventies and early eighties, well the 90s onwards curries are poor in comparison, lacking both the aroma and unique flavour they used to have back then. It isn't just me saying this by the way. My friends from back in that time all agree and bemoan the generally awful standard of today's curries and long for that missing taste and aroma.

Now you're right in the sense that there are no literal secret ingredients but that doesn't mean there are not ingredients that were used back then that have fallen out of use and so we are unaware of, which makes them sort of secret ingredients. It's no coincidence that curry quality dropped from the early nineties on just as a proliferation of curry houses occurred and the increased competition forced budget cutting so as to remain competitive and stay in business. Something had to give and unfortunately it was the quality of curry.

To be honest, it's somewhat galling to have to read with regularity someone on this forum claiming that there's no missing 5% or whatever when they mostly don't even qualify to comment as their curry eating experience only goes back two or three decades. Think of it this way, say your only experience of eating cheese is those Frankenstein American burger cheese slices. So that's your reference level. But I've eaten a quality extra-mature cheddar cheese which, for arguments sake, let's say is no longer available. How do I convince you that there was a better cheese and convey to you just how lacklustre that burger cheese is in comparison?

So I'll tell you, as fact, that from experience there is either a missing ingredient or ingredients, or a missing technique, or some combination of the two, to obtain curries as they used to be. And, no, it ain't beer!

Quote from: livo on September 01, 2022, 12:28 AMI've always known this about traditionally cooked dishes and always wondered why it happens in home cooked BIR style curries when actual restaurants can produce that something extra off the bat so to speak.  If I buy a T/A and have leftovers the next day, they are just the same as the day before. 

Spot on livo!

I've wondered the exact same thing. I really do see this as one of those "secrets" that BIRs (and apparently AIRs) know and we don't. What magic process are they using? I'm convinced if we could crack this particular peculiarity we'd (well maybe I'd) be closer to the curries of old.
New thread maybe?

Edit: I just realised we've all been duped. These YouTube videos and multifarious BIR cookbooks are all sham. What in fact happens is the BIRs cook up a huge batch of all the curries, stick 'em in a cold store overnight, and microwave them the next day to order. Conniving so-and-sos!

Quote from: livo on August 29, 2022, 12:32 AMI understand some people will insist that my mistake was making 1.2 quantity.  This is not the case with Base Gravy which I have found to be easily and successfully scaled to any quantity desired and if only performing a 1 step halving or doubling is perfectly acceptable.

Having made this base as specified and then following up with the Chicken Balti (pretty simple dish to cook), where did it go wrong?

I don't have any issue with the linear scaling of base quantities. The only possible error would be you didn't do the scaling accurately for whatever reason. So maybe you wanted to scale by half but forgot this for one or more of the ingredients and used the full quantity instead. But that would add flavour to the base and also it seems unlikely you'd make this error for more than one ingredient. I have made this sort of mistake myself though in the past, usually as a result of transcribing original quantities wrongly or just having a brain fart while doing the scaling. I'm sure that didn't happen for me on this one though.

Quote from: livo on August 28, 2022, 10:28 PM

Quote from: Peripatetic Phil on August 28, 2022, 09:24 PM
... I purchase a 300gm pack of cassia bark (wrongly labelled "Cinnamon") specifically to try my hand at making this much-lauded balti ...
--
** Phil.

So your Cassia Bark is also incorrectly labelled Phil?  That's not really surprising if it's coming out of India.  Shake a leg mate and bash this out so you can make an informed appraisal.

It seems it is correctly labelled. From Wikipedia, " Cassia is also the English common name of some species in the genus Cinnamomum of the family Lauraceae."  And cinnamomum is just cinnamon, so they are quite correct in labelling the cassia as cinnamon.

Quote from: Lahore Bob on August 29, 2022, 09:01 AM

Quote from: livo on August 29, 2022, 12:32 AM
Things that could "go wrong"!!
Having made this base as specified and then following up with the Chicken Balti (pretty simple dish to cook), where did it go wrong?

My money would be on it going wrong when making the akhni stock.   

Really? You think cooking whole spices in a pan of water is the hardest part to follow? And yeah, yeah, I did accidentally leave the lid off so had more water loss than I should have but you think that is the reason I find the base bland? The mind boggles! I'm finding it hard to judge whether your responses are just designed as a wind up or as genuine, thoughtful input.

Anyway, we'll find out when I eventually get around to making it again, to the letter (spoiler, it ain't gonna make an ounce of difference).

Quote from: mickdabass on August 26, 2022, 04:25 PMAlso I have given the recipe to five complete novices to try. They have never made a curry from scratch before but I supplied them with all the spices. Four of them absolutely love it, the fifth person is still yet to try it.

So you think five novices who have not even made any sort of curry before are all qualified to make this base sauce without error but me and livo who have huge experience of making all sorts of curry over many years aren't and must have messed up somehow? Hmmmm, I think your logic is a bit skewed.

And these five lab rats, what sort of curries do they usually eat? Is it standard BIR or balti or both? And what is there usual curry, the bland korma side of things or the fuller flavoured savoury madras type curries? This all has bearing on the validity of your test.