Quote from: tempest63 on January 17, 2005, 09:42 AM
?22 is more than most farmers get for the whole beast

Welcome to Waitrose 

To be fair it was the most tender lamb I have ever tasted and had little or no fat on it

Hey, havent they deleted the links to this forum on the in2curry website?

Here's the book on amazon, only available in hardback at the mo I think:

http://tinyurl.com/3jsvo

About a year ago I decided to embark on a quest to learn how to cook the meals that are served in British Indian restaurants (BIR?s), the first source of knowledge I found was a book by Kris Dhillon ? The Curry secret, on reading this I thought my prayers had been answered, she explained all the secrets of the trade and it all sounded perfect. One of my favourite curries at the time was Chicken Tikka Masala so I decided to try that from Kris? book, it was a good curry but CTM it wasn?t, at this point I realised that Kris? book was probably too old now so I started looking again and found Pat Chapman?s book.


The new curry bible is subtitled ?The ultimate modern curry house recipe book? - sounded promising!

The book is a superb read, forgetting about the recipes for a minute the book is fascinating for any curry lover and has the best colour photographs I have seen in a cookbook. It goes into much of the history of curry dish by dish next to the recipes, goes into detail about differing curry styles around the world and describes the qualities of all the different ground/whole and herb ingredients in Indian cooking. While it is aimed at the Indian restaurant curry enthusiast it also has authentic dishes side by side to the BIR ones, which is interesting.

OK let?s get to the recipes. The book is split into the following sections:
Starters, Kebabs, Tandoori and Tikka. The curries themselves are in 3 sections: Top 16 curries, 16 favourite curries and 16 house specials. Then we have vegetable and dhal curries, side dishes and finally deserts.

As you can see its quite comprehensive with loads of recipes, the 16 top curries section is all the restaurant favourites: balti, jalfrezi, korma etc, the other 32 main curries are a bit more exotic and very interesting to read about.

Some people have complained about the structure of the book, you are constantly flipping back between pages to get to the various spice mixes and marinades but I found this not too bad.

OK, the bottom line, what are the recipes like? In a word ? varied. Some are top drawer like the balti recipe, prawn puree & madras, some are average or not quite right ? bhuna, CTM, onion bhajis. The biggest problem I have with the book is the base curry sauce I feel is not quite right or poorly explained and seeing as it is the basis for a lot of the restaurant lookalike recipes this is a problem. (see https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=62.msg215#msg215 for a discussion on it). I did mail Pat on the subject of this base sauce but didn?t get a very useful reply (although I was surprised to get any reply at all to be honest).

One other word of warning, the base curry masala mix, tandoori masala mix and garam masala contain ingredients that a lot of people will be hard pressed to find ourside of a very good asian grocer (beetroot powder, annato seed, black cardamom amchoor etc)

In summary I would rate it highly overall because it is so well presented and is such a good read, however it is not always spot on with the restaurant recipes and the base sauce recipe is iffy.? I might try out the recipes using Pete?s base instead.

Hi mate,

I have used waitrose loin fillet which was bloody expensive (?22/Kg) and also I have used a leg of lamb joint which I have cut up into lean cubes, which is a pain to prepare but it seems to be the only reliable and cheap(ish) way to get lamb from a supermarket

And here it is, this is taken from Pat's recent book "The New Curry Bible", first published in 2004. I will write a review of this book and post it on this forum soon.

Curry Masala Gravy

4oz ghee
5.5oz garlic cloves finely chopped
4oz ginger finely chopped
2.25 lbs Spanish onions chopped
1 pint water
9oz curry masala paste

Method:

Heat ghee on high and stir fry the garlic and ginger until they have become translucent

Lower the heat and add the onions bit by bit until they have all become brown and caramelised

Add the water and puree with a blender

At this point Pat?s instructions tail off a bit, he says you can freeze it now and add the curry masala paste later or you can add it now but he doesn?t give any further instructions. If I were to add the curry masala paste now I would probably simmer the whole lot for another hour.

The curry masala paste is made up of about 16 spices and I wont post it here, I suggest using any old curry powder recipe instead but you must make a paste of it otherwise you may add to much, I think the last time I tried this base I only added half the amount of curry masala paste as it was a bit overpowering.


Im interested to hear if anyone else has had any luck with this from Pat?s book as when I first tried to make this curry base it turned out a bit dodgy, it had a harsh taste which I later found out was the onions.

It was probably my fault as I didn?t use Spanish onions but more likely I didn?t cook the onions for long enough, I suggest if you do try this you make sure the onions are very well cooked (they should be brown). One other thing you can do to remove the bitterness is to blanch the onions in boiling water before using them, this seemed to help.

And here's how it looked while cooking

This is a recipe I use for precooking all meat I use in any Indian dish, it produces a very tasty and tender result.

Ingredients:

4 TBSP vegetable oil
Half a small onion chopped
4 cloves
1 black cardamom
2 green cardamom
2 inch stick cinnamon
1 bay leaf
1 TSP curry powder (depending on volume of water being added)
2 TBSP yoghurt (not low fat)
1 TSP lemon juice

Method:

Bring the oil to a medium heat and add the onion, and whole spices, fry for a minute then reduce the heat slightly.

Add the meat, yoghurt, lemon juice and curry powder (You can cook a lot of meat in a big pan using this method, increase the volume of curry power and whole spices if cooking loads, this recipe is good for up to 1Kg of meat) and give it all a good stir round for 1 minute then add boiling water to a level just so it covers the meat.

You now need to simmer for the following time:

Chicken ? 20 minutes.
Lamb ? 35 minutes.
Beef ? 40 minutes.

OK, I have adapted a Kalia recipe I found on the net to the BIR style, it had all the ingredients in that my local BIR listed on the menu so it may be close. I cooked it last night and it was a great curry but not a perfect copy of my local BIR's Lamb Kalia (my lamb was cooked better though? )

Lamb Kalia

Serves 2

Ingredients:

Enough lamb for 2 (200-400g) precooked (I used Waitrose loin fillet, its was the most tender lamb I have ever had but its bloody expensive ?22/Kg)

4 tbsp vegetable oil (preferably spiced from curry gravy)

Grind these up and make a paste with the chilli powder and a little water
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp black onion seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp small mustard seeds
? tsp fenugreek seeds

1 tsp chilli powder


3 whole red chillies chopped (the small Thai ones)
1 medium onion chopped
1 heaped tsp of crushed garlic
1 heaped tsp of crushed ginger
1 tomato chopped small

~200ml of curry gravy base (Pete?s base as previously described)
2 tsp sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp salt or to taste
chopped coriander leaves for garnish


Method:

As with all BIR curries you cook on a high heat so it is very important to keep stirring the mixture, the garlic and ginger will burn very easily as will the spice paste.


Bring the oil up to temperature on a high heat, add the onions and stir fry for a couple few minutes.

Add the ginger and garlic and stir fry until the ginger and garlic has gone brown, the onions should also be turning brown at the edges by now.

Add chillies and 1 TBSP of the curry base and stir fry until evaporated.

Add the spice paste and fry for 30 seconds, turn heat down to medium

Add the curry base a few TBSP?s at a time until it?s all in, cook for a minute more

Add the precooked lamb and the sugar and simmer for 5 minutes

Add the lemon juice and coriander, cook for a minute more and serve.

Yes indeed, or leave people to fend for themselves