Curry Recipes Online
Beginners Guide => Grow Your Own Spices and Herbs => Topic started by: Gazzer63 on January 31, 2018, 07:25 PM
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Hi all.
If I may pick your brains. Anybody tried using using this herb? Black stone flower/ stone flower / dagad phool.
All the best
Gazzer63
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Yes, revolting! The dominant flavour of Natco GM.
Its most probably a Marmite herb, you either love it or hate it.
I can't liken it to anything other than its another perfume flavour like coriander, kewra, rose etc..
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Gazzer63
Do you actually have some of this black stone flower. Very obscure,
I seem to remember Vah Chef using it in some of his early Tamil videos.
NOT a herb, its a Lichen/Fungi, with no distinct flavour of its own, another name for it is Kalpasi
It may be used by chefs in South Indian BIR, but I doubt the majority of BIR
will have heard of it, or indeed bother with it, because of its rarity and cost!
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Dagarful aka Dagar Phool. It's nice, It's "Indian". It's interesting. I like it. Is it the "missing link"? No. I don't think so. Will I use it again? Definitely.
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I was looking at something completely different this morning in old posts, circa 2011 and decided to do a Google search on The Curry Club. My late Father-in-Law was a subscriber way back in the late 1980's when I first met my wife. There is little left of it other than Pat Chapman's books (which cop a fair slamming on this site). I have none and I don't know what happened to the FIL's old stuff when he passed a few years ago. Anyway, the Google search surprised me with a find of this very small CRO thread of only the OP and 7 replies (1 from George) dating back to 2005. Pat Chapman knows the answer to the secret (http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=172.msg864#msg864)
The OP, by Blondie, contains an extract from, and a link to, an article in The Guardian from 2002.
It's curry, but not as we know it (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/may/12/foodanddrink.shopping2)
I decided to read it through just out of interest.
Cinnamon Club chef at the time Vivek Singh discusses the importation of special ingredients for specific dishes and here I surprisingly found this reference to "Rock Moss".
"In common with other top-class Indian restaurants, the Cinnamon Club imports many spices directly. 'A Rajasthani dish with coriander grown in Kenya somehow doesn't taste the same,' Vivek says. 'We might serve a Rajasthani lamb curry with lemon rice from the south of India, but the Rajasthani lamb curry itself must be authentic.'
Red chillies are brought in from Rajasthan; pepper, cinnamon and cardamom from Kerala; mustard from Bengal; rattan jyot from Kashmir; and rock moss from Hyderabad. This last ingredient, which looks exactly as it sounds, doesn't taste of anything, but brings out the favour of biryanis. 'A real biryani requires a high level of skill,' Vivek explains, 'because the marinated meat is covered with rice that is already two-thirds cooked. Then it is sealed and steamed so that the raw meat cooks in the same time as the rice. It needs a large quantity to work.'
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The OP, by Blondie, contains an extract from, and a link to, an article in The Guardian from 2002. It's curry, but not as we know it (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/may/12/foodanddrink.shopping2)
Great find, Livo. I read the article from cover to cover, and apart from the fact that I thought that Veerasawmy's was owned by Camelia Panjabi, not Namita, the only part of the article that worried me was this bit : Monosodium glutamate enhances taste and thickens sauces.
Is MSG really a thickening agent ?
** Phil.
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I read that too and had the same thought. I don't think it is Phil. At least certainly not in the quantities that I've ever used it. Maybe they used to use it by the cup-full.
I have some Ajinamoto in the spice cupboard that I occasionally use when it is specifically called for in some Asian dishes or seasoning spice mixes, but it is generally a no show for me nowadays.
I knew a guy (now deceased) who would immediately develop a crippling migraine upon eating even the slightest amount of Flavour Enhancer 621.