It must've been before my time naga, because I don't remember it at all. What was it, some kind of lemon juice like Jif?

Quote from: jb on March 30, 2013, 07:18 PM
Recently I was kindly invited(along with Dave Curryhell) by Natterjack(Chris) to a Sunday afternoon curry lesson in Chris' local restaurant.
<snip>

Chris has some footage which he'll hopefully sort and upload.

Ooops, bit slow, but finally JB cooking his Pathia is uploaded here:

https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,12525.msg101591.html#msg101591

Never one to be rushed I finally got around to uploading JB cooking his Pathia from our cooking lesson at Zaman. Like most restaurants they have their signature style and this Pathia made use of many of the same elements as the Bhuna, eg..

- fine julienned strips of garlic and fresh ginger to start (no G&G paste)
- pre cooked fine chopped onions
- pre cooked chunky onions and green peppers fried with mix powder and cumin & mustard seeds
- red masala sauce with blended plum tomatoes, green chillies, coriander leaves, garlic & ginger paste and garam masala

Interesting omission was no mix powder used in the final prep of this Pathia, which JB queried but was told it's not used in their Pathia (although some of the spice flavours will come from the use of pre-cooked onions and chicken stock).

http://youtu.be/0UdwmswA5_c

(Zaman Bhuna is here: https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,11778.0.html)

Hi WD,

I also had the idea of using a funnel to support the pastry case while filling it and tried this yesterday - didn't work! The pastry doesn't have enough strength to support itself within thr funnel, so the edges just collapsed inwards. I reverted to holding the pastry in one hand and filling with the other. In fact I don't find the stuffing process to be the most time consuming, it's the rolling out which gets me.

The glimpse inside what I suppose to be an 80s BIR kitchen is from 3:15 in the video by the way. A ladle of "one pot" curry sauce which looks fully spiced and rich in oil is added to a dry pan and a scoop of shredded roasted chicken breast is added.
Presumably the customer had paid the de rigeur "50p extra for breast meat only"

Not sure either. I added a bit of carrot but not much. Each samosa is stuffed with as much as I dare while still being able to close it.

Re streamlining it seems to me most of the time is in the rolling out of pastry, because you can't rush it otherwise the damn stuff sticks to the rolling pin. Maybe using a pasta roller would speed through creating thin strips of pastry from which the circles could be cut?

Found this so put it onto YouTube.. An interesting celebrity talking heads documentary on the British love of curry. Includes a potted history of the evolution of the BIR as we know it, with the odd glance inside restaurant kitchens. Mostly it's just TV celebs trotting out cliches about curry houses. Still, worth a watch

http://youtu.be/c5q9yJrDXXg

Well today I made my third batch of these samosas, using up the final third of the filling made last weekend. Quite a turnaround from my initial "never again" position,  which was a bit silly with hindsight.

I'm trying to dial in on exact measurements for the pastry as I like to eliminate variations between batches. Today I used these ratios which worked well:

250g plain flour
Half level tsp salt
One third level tsp Kalonji seeds
3 tbsp oil
130ml (130g) water
Yield was 7 x 7" pastry discs for 14 samosas

I initially added 125g water which didn't quite come together as a dough, hence the extra tsp full.

I love the end result of these samosas and have got the technique a bit more nailed but it still took me over 2 hours to make, even using pre-made filling. If there's a way to streamline the process and speed them up, I'm all ears.

Results are in... The samosas which were frozen uncooked, then fried from frozen were a bit drier and not as well flavoured as those which were cooked before freezing, then simply defrosted without further cooking. There was a kind of sweetness to the pastry of the precooked ones which was less prevalent in the cook from frozen ones.

Today I enjoyed, for my lunch at work, the samosas cooked at the weekend which had been frozen a few days as an experiment. Having defrosted overnight in the fridge they were indistinguishable from freshly cooked. In short, delicious.

Next test will be to fry from frozen some of the uncooked ones which are in the freezer. Hopefully this will settle for me the question of whether freezing before or after cooking is best. I suspect the answer is before, but we will see.