Quote from: mickyp on January 30, 2020, 10:32 AM
Ok, so i tried cooking Chicken tikka two ways, one at 180c for about 20 ish mins and the other at 290c for 5 mins each side, both were cooked ok. Other half said the tikka cooked at the lower temp was juicier, i agreed with that but thought the chicken cooked at the higher temp looked the part, slight charring at the tips, dont get me wrong it wasn't dry just a tad drier than the lower temp cooked chicken.

Just wondering as a tandoor oven is hotter than 290c but draws in air from underneath would that mean although the temp is high the air is more "moist",  anyone have any thoughts, experience on this?

Begin soapbox sermon>>>

The drier chicken was cooked to a higher internal temperature. In any protein that isn't cooked to the point of collagen breaking down (like American BBQ or stew) that is the only factor that figures into how moist a your end product is. When you cook at higher temperatures you risk overshooting your target internal temperature as your error bars are smaller (time in the appropriate zone).

Moisture is a function of how much water is in the protein. When you cook the proteins denature. They contract and they squeeze the water out. The higher you raise the internal temperature the more they contract and the more water is squeezed out. That is just biochemistry.

The only ways to ensure moist protein are blind luck and measuring the internal temperature of the protein. If you don't own and regularly use an instant read thermometer all you are doing is guessing.

<<<end soapbox sermon

Apologies for preaching. This one makes me a bit crazy.

Quote from: Bowser on January 28, 2020, 12:26 PM
Hey Romain I just worked out that the tadka dal was your recipe from your website hahaha and I just cooked it again with aloo chaat chicken and made chicken diavlo last night your recipes are so good man

Awesome and thank you for saying so!

Getting a good quality Japanese rice cooker and amchoor as an ingredient.

I pour it into a mug and drink it while I cook the curry. It's quite tasty stuff.

Haha. Grade 4 level comprehension. Sounds about right. I was going for Grade 6 but I will take Grade 4. Maybe I'll throw in a comma or two now I know I have some leeway.

I personally believe that there is something to be said for clarity. I have degrees in biochemistry and business. I can write convoluted, jargon-filled sentences with the best of them.

I work intermittently with a professional writer. He has taught me some fundamental techniques. Avoid passive voice. Keep things concise. Be clear. Know what you are trying to say. And just say it.

I have a tool as part of my blog publishing environment that runs the Flesch-Kincaid readability test on my writing. It also keeps an eye on excessive use of passive voice and flags run-on sentences. I try to maintain a score of somewhere around 80 which is considered, according to wikipedia, to be conversational and easy to read.

The snippet below gets a score of 35. Granted it is a small sample but anything in the 30-40 range is considered difficult to read. The example given on Wikipedia for prose written at this level of complexity is Harvard Law Review.

"The style can, and does, alienate some readers, just as does (I am sure) my own preference for long, convoluted, sentences with multiple subordinate clauses, archaic spellings ("shewn"), less common spellings ("pulao"), foreign spellings ("joghurt"), an insistence on the correct diacritics for foreign words such as "r

That's exactly how I read it, yes. 

If that's aimed at my style let it be known that if they don't like the writing they are free to go elsewhere. I simply do not care. That too, is a conscious choice.

Haha. Gatling gun indeed. Try subvocalizing it when you read it. People who know me personally tell me they hear me speaking when they read my blog. Conversational.

It's not perfect. Just pretty close. I like to think of it as a gateway curry. You have to bloom your spices in oil for this to work. IMO you need to bloom your spices no matter what though so YMMV.

Quote from: Onions on January 23, 2020, 11:21 AM

Excellent blog Romaine. Just FYI, you have permission to use more than an average of five words per sentence And there is more punctuation available than just a full-stop.  ~~~~

Thank you. The writing style is a conscious choice. I like to think it is a differentiator. And I do get quite a bit of positive feedback so I am going to stick with it. Part of the brand, as it were.

There are many, many blogs out there with a rambling, disjointed style of writing where the reader is forced to follow along the author's thoughts over multiple lines - and multiple logical sentences and I find that a bit tiresome to read so I avoid it by using a choppy, broken up style of writing both to improve the user experience and frankly because I am not a fan of sentences the length of a paragraph.

I trust you see why I write the way I do? Based on the sentence above?