Thanks for that, CK.  I'll be trying this at some point.

Red onion... that'll be a second mortgage, then!

Interesting too that - like KD - they reckon 200ml of sauce is enough for one serving.  There'd be a few angry customers round Essex way if restaurants served that up. Or  do budgies eat curry?!

Hi, all.

I'm having a curry cook-up this weekend to coincide with a barby on Sunday (so I can try out some smoky onions in the mix).  As I was buying some ingedients this morning, a thought occurred to me:

Are you guys still roasting and grinding your own spices, or do you use factory-ground?  I gave up roasting about two years ago (apart from home-mixed garam masala), but still grind at home.  Partly because (I'm told) whole spices keep for much longer, so it makes economic sense to me.  But I can't get the spices anywhere near as fine as factory ground in my little coffee-grinder.

Plus, it hadn't occured to me to use factory ground curry powders - Rajah mild madras, for example - until I joined this site, and people said they'd been told by BIR chefs that they use them themselves.

Those of you fortunate enough to have been in BIR kitchens and talked with chefs - did you see any evidence of factory ground (i.e. packaged and labelled) spices like cumin and coriander knocking about?

The guy in the market who I buy spices from said that his supplier also supplies his local takeaway.  I've forgotten exactly what the company's called but it's something like T.R.S. - sound familiar to anyone?

Well. I was in my favourite local takeaway last night.  It's undergone a change of ownership, but still has the same chef.  I managed to pluck up enough courage to ask the guy behind the counter  if it would be possible, on a quiet night, to buy a dish and go into the kitchen to watch it being cooked.  I said I was interested in BIR food, try to cook it at home, and so on - and that their food was the best in the area (which it is, in my opinion).  This time the guy actually took my name and phone number, and said he would ask 'The Boss'.  I'm not holding my breath, though!

He was particularly interested in which other restaurants we'd had food from.

Blondie, that's fantastic.  How great that they've given out sample recipes to 'bench test'.

At least it shows they care about the book and its contents, if they want to make sure the recipes can be recreated at home.  Looking forward to your opinions later!

This looks to have the same vibrant colour that my favourite local takeway's curries have (as opposed to those from restaurants 'up the road from me' in Southend, which tend to be more brown).

I like the idea of watery base sauces that have to be evaporated down in the final dish.  I dunno why, but it just 'feels' right.

Y'see, this is really quite exciting.  You just can't get much more basic than that madras sauce recipe, so as it had 'the taste' this really narrows down the possibilities of where it comes from - or at least where it is in the cooking process.  If it's not in the base to start with, as some people are saying, then it's in one of the few ingredients used in the dish.

I know what I'll be doing next!  I'll cook up a batch of MarkJ's base with added chicken stock, and then make up as many restaurant masalas as I can from the recipes listed on this site.  Then with each curry I make, I'll try a different masala, mixtures of ketchup and puree or just ketchup, pre-fried onions or barbied ones...  this on the basis of chasing my local's 'taste' (their madras and vindaloo are identical apart from chilli heat.  And a potato!).

Another great post, MarkJ - thanks.  One question - did he flame the pan at any point?

Ian
--

Well, I stuck my email address on their mailing list yesterday, anyway.  You never know.

That sounds good for the money, Darth - what make is it?  I hate the decanting of sauce into my blender and all that messing about.  But I tried a friend's posh Anthony Warrell-Thompson hand blender and the poor little thing nearly burnt out well before the sauce was pureed.

Thomashenry, I have a cheap & cheerful jug blender bought for me as a present.  I can't remember the make but it's not well known.  But it has 8 speeds, a 'pulse' function and holds a litre and a half at a time, so I can do a  KD recipe in two batches.

(Edited for spelling! :)

Yes, I thought about food colouring... but it's not quite that  bright and red.

Actually last night's (Thursday's) curry was the best using this base so far, and I managed to get the colour more reddy-golden. The only differences to the last version I  posted were:

After the chopped onion and pepper were flashed off, I added one very heaped tsp of tomato puree and stir fried it untill it had completely broken up, spread around the pan and almost disappeared - it turned the onions pink.  Then I added a splash of base and immediately added 2 heaped tsp chilli powder, 1/2 tsp of spice mix and just a pinch of gound methi.  The spices cooked as the curry evaporated, and what was in the pan turned a deep red.  I evaporated this almost dry and then splashed in some chicken stock and the rest of the gravy, and carried on as above.  I left out the salt completely.

Also, breaking a rule of mine, but out of interest, I stirred in  a good pinch of fresh coriander to the curry as it was simmering a couple of minutes before the end (with the rest added as above).

It really was quite good.  I'm at the end of the batch now, but I'm going to have to try this again next time - perhaps a bit earlier in the evening (and a bit more sober! :)

I had an idea the other day, but it might be utterly stupid.  The trouble is, it's burning a hole in my head, so I've got to tell someone (and who better than you lot?! ).

I've always thought that the overpowering smell in restaurants came from the tandoor.  And I've thought that the bought curries I like best have this aroma about them.  The puzzle being, that we know meat for the plain curries (i.e. not chicken tikka vindaloo) isn't cooked in the tandoor.  It's impractical.

We know that at least some restaurants/takeaways use a chicken stock in their bases.  Pete's seen something added to his dish which he was told was 'balti paste'  but which he now thinks - on reflection - might have been chicken jelly.  So (takes deep breath and waits for howls of laughter):

Is there any reason, d'you think, why some kitchens might make a chicken stock...

...from chicken cooked in the tandoor?

Somebody said here (sorry, can't remember who) that stock made from roasted chicken was richer because the bones caramalised on the oven.  Somebody else said that the tandoor meat was cooked during the day, as the temperature of the oven needed to be lowered for breads and kebabs during the evening.  So if there was unsold tandoori chicken in the fridge at the end of the day, could it end up in next day's stock?

Or have I just boiled my brain with home-cooked vindaloos each day for the past week?!