I run the risk here of creating a general yawn but I just searched the site for the word "umami" and it didn't come up.

I had always been taught that sweet, salty, sour and bitter were the fundamental 'tastes' with 'spicy-hot' and 'metallic' also tongue sensations but in a different category. I was taught that all other sensations from enjoyable food came from fragrance (smell) and texture.

Yet there seemed to be something missing. Some foods, and most notably a good BIR curry, have such a HUGE savory taste which can't be matched using any combination of the four basics or by the addition of herbal fragrances.

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) has no smell and although it is salty to taste its effect on flavour enhancement is certainly not due to saltiness - there had to be a missing taste component of a 'savory' nature - and probably more than one.

I now see that this is well known in the food industry and it has been given the name "umami" - there seem to be several components to be added in order to produce a balanced umami and this includes the smoky component often mentioned on here.

Understanding umami, or having an intuitive sense of it, seems to be a vital element in producing delicious dishes, and it is not just a matter of throwing in the right amount of MSG - there appear to be multiple ingredients which must be added to enhance the umami.

Where the recipes here have produced noble results I suggest that the right umami has been an essential component of that success.

If what I have said is old hat for you, I apologize; it is a revelation for me and possibly for a few others too. For anybody who complains that the "can't seem to get that restaurant taste" in their home-cooked food (Indian, Chinese whatever) the secret appears to lie here.

There is a wealth of information on the web if you just search under "umami" and there is even an "Umami Information Centre'.

<sup>the poor bird that we ate there had been festering in their kitchen, but there was no way that even Tandoori spicing could disguise the taste and smell of putrefaction ![/sub]

What a talent you have for whetting the appetite ... pity I just ate me dinner.</sup>

I just tried this recipe, not having the time to create all those sub-components. I am a veteran cook of 50 years worth of nice, wholesome home-made curries - BUT I have never yet cooked something which, if served to me in an Indian restaurant, would bring a knowing smile to my face. My home-made always tastes home-made by that standard.

OK, so I tried this recipe and it was excellent; very delicious and the spices and flavours were marked and well balanced. Smoky taste? No, sorry. Just a really, really good home-made curry. Thank you and I did enjoy it!

Here is a theory about this "BIR" flavour, which seems so elusive in the hands of home-bound chefs, genuine Indian mothers and grandmothers and in recipes concocted by people such as Madhur Jaffrey, Kriss Dillon, J. Sainsbury or Fred Tesco!

Do the restaurants use some forbidden and deeply secret ingredient? Just as we watch a conjurer intently as he performs his trick, never able to see what he does that makes the difference; so we watch a BIR chef and attempt to duplicate his motions without the longed-for success. My previous best ever curry, made after reading this forum, missed the mark I was aiming for.

BIR curries are swimming in oil. The gravy medium IS oil. The taste is imparted to our mouth via oil (and is so intense!). OK, this oil may be concealed (disguised) in the thick base which is composed of mostly reduced onion and tomato, but oil is the medium in which the cooking took place and water was excluded (or at least highly controlled) so far as was possible.

Almost always, we use water for our cookery. The water extracts the essences from the ingredients (inefficiently), brings them to (approximately) 100 degrees C and does the heat exchange that is needed to cook the meat and the veggies at that temperature. Sure, we may start out frying but ultimately the meat and the veggies get simmer-cooked in water at the stated hundred degrees and with predominantly water interfacing the meat & veggies.

My opinion is that the BIR difference is tied to oil cooking vs. water cooking.

Suppose we substituted oil for the whole process? I tried as follows:

Fried onions till golden brown, fried garlic/ginger pur?ed in oil, fried those spices which can stand frying without losing their aroma, fried tomato paste (NOT crushed tomatoes because they will contain too much water) and, keeping the whole awash with oil at a temperature above 100 degrees (but never so hot as to carbonize or burn badly on the bottom), finally I slow fried the meat and whole veggies at close to 100 deg., adding the more vulnerable spices right near the end. Doing it this way I accomplished two vital things (1) cooked at a temperature above 100 degrees C which got a 'smoky taste' into the oil from the onions (2) then efficiently extracted the essential oils of the spices with an oil medium and transferred it to the meat and veggies via oil interface - and, finally, the flavours dissolved in the oil (which were able to go into the meat far more easily because they were much more concentrated in the oil than they would have been in water) and then the same flavours hit the mouth via the oil medium with such a huge TASTE compared to our water-cooked curries!

I'm not totally satisfied but I felt this was a quantum leap (for me anyway). I should have liked more smoky taste and I would have liked more aromatic spice bouquet, like cardamom especially, but the taste was the closest I have ever managed (in 1000+ attempts) and it was only a first go.

After cooking this way, you can by all means skim off oil for re-use, just as the restaurants do - and the recycled oil of course makes the next curry even tastier. Because there is a lot of reduced onion and tomato paste in the sauce, the extra oil is less easy to see, more easy to hide! But of course it is there and it's none too healthy either ? I suggest that is why oil cooking is kept as a secretive technique and those who enquire come away with a recipe guaranteed to do water-cooking. That also is why you shouldn't eat too much of this stuff and why Mdm. Jaffrey is so healthy.

I am really looking forward to your post
You know exactly what you're after, but will you get it?
The end of a 40 year search?

I made the Chicken Bhuna tonight. My son said it was the best curry I have done; my wife said it was "Better than Bombay Bhiel" (our usual take-out here) and I, myself, scored it at 75% (since I started in 1960 I have never done an Indian curry better than 50% on my personal score card). If I had tried the same curry, done by one of the experts here, I don't doubt I would have enjoyed it even more - I did cut a few corners such as making only a small quantity of base and not using grams to measure and such as not marinating the meat for the full 4 hours and also my gas hob is weak so the onion took ages to brown; the chicken a long time to sear.  Oh yes, and I used my supplier's "house" brand curry powder and garam masalla.

So I have lots of room for improvement. I didn't get a lot of "smoky" taste and I should have liked a bit more bouquet from, say, cardamom. Possibly, also, a little more sour might have improved it.

A big "Thank you" to Panpot - you are touching a lot of people's lives here in a very delightful way!

Spotty