yes i'm in Newcastle, you to ?

there all going down hill.

graeme.

Sorry for the late reply Ive just got back off my holls 

Yeah Im from Newcastle greame. I usualy just get mine from either Brighton grove or spice balti diner on the west road. Curry capital formaly the rupali in the big market (curry hell), do an excelent lunchtime special called "easy curry", ?3.75. Thats a main meal, rice and nann http://www.curryhell.com/ the portions arn't massive but enough for a lunchtime meal.

 

No problem terry 

I don't know if you've noticed but your recipe is almost identical to the one poppadom_pete posted after you?

YF

Yeah the first version (before the edit) is quite similar to the one I had posted. Except for the coconut bit. I may try adding coconut to the one I posted, although it was allready realy sweet anyways.

Ian before writing it down he asked how much I would be making and I just looked through into the kitchen at what looked to be an industrial size ghee/oil tub which I would say was about 4 litre and said "about that much". So something we could realisticly replicate at home, I realy should have asked what capacity the tub was but Id say 4 about litres. And I would definatly think that thats a much smaller version of the quantity he makes for the restaraunt.

As for the spoon size I would say his would equate to about 4 normal tablespoons, Ive had a quick look on google Image search but can find anything that looked about the same size, Ill have a better look later.

Anyways first thing I done when I got home from work today was to get this one on the go and the results were very good, Id say very similar to KDs base and a few others Ive tried on here. Very sweet, which I think may be to do with the salt content. He mentioned to me a while back that he used lots of salt and when making this base and when I first put the salt in I thought it was way over the top, far to salty. After the hour and twenty minutes of cooking it just tasted a lot sweeter than any other base Ive tried. Im sure I recal a topic or duscussion on here about salt having ome kind of chemical reaction with the onion or something like that. I may be mistaken but I definatly think it sweetened it up a lot. All in all I would say this was a very good base, very similar to KDs but from what I remember from making the KD base this one seemed a lot less fuss, very straight forward.

If anyone gives it a try please post your results Id be intrested to see what people think of it.

Cheers

You mention that it's not cooked again after blending but wouldn't he just leave the pot simmering away all night ready for use anyway so it's effectively being cooked again then?

He just said to leave it on for a few minutes after blending and that was it.

Although from my knowledge of BIRs I would have expected he whould have probably left it on simmer and I would thnk this would add to the flavour.

Im probably going to try this one tonight, although Im still a bit stuffed of last nights ceylon so Ill see how it goes. Ill post results here and get some flicks. 

Hi folks, Ive been eating curry from the same curry house in Newcastle for a good few years now but just recently got talking and approached the subject of base sauces. Anyways tonight he was kind enough to take out 10 minutes to write the recipe down. As you can imagine I was realy excited about this, hearing it from the horses mouth and wot not. I was expecting some great revelation but its much the same as most of the recipes we allready know, its still nice to hear it first hand though and I will certainly be giving it a try.

Here goes.

The spoon that was used was a cooking size spoon and I would say roughly 4 normal tablespoons in size, I will try and find a pic of a similar sized spoon later.

1 pot (Id say about 4 litres) filled with onions, onions only need to be half chopped.
Half fill the pan with water. More water can be added to make sure the onions are covered when cooking.
Add 1spponfull of garlic and ginger puree which is a 50/50 mix.
Add half a spoon of salt.
Now boil this for about an hour.
He dscribed it as being ready when the onions could be cut with a spoon. ;D


He then said add about 10 spoons of vegtable oil, after about 2 minutes you should be able to see the oil rise.
Then add 3/4 of a spoon of tomato puree.
1/2 of a spoon of turmeric.
1/2 of a spoon of curry powder.
1/4 of a spoon of chilli powder (optional).
1/4 of a spoon of corriander powder.
1/4 of a spoon of cumin powder.
A little bit less than a 1/4 of a spoon of garam massala.

Cook this for 20 minutes making sure it is stirred on a regualr basis.

Then blend and cook for a few more minutes to finish the base.
He uses a handheld blender which he just puts into the pan so he doesnt need to take the mixture out to blend.

I questioned him about brands of spices and he said it realy wasnt important.

He did say it was going to be difficult to write down as he never realy measure stuff and did it by eye, which is to be expected. So dont take the measurements as gospel.

He did go on to talk about making the actualy currys but not in great depth. He did say that oil was heated to which he added garlic/ginger paste and whatever spice mixture was used making sure the spices were actualy heated to quite a high temprature before adding the gravy. Again stuff we allready know but nice to hear first hand.

Well I think thats about it but if theres anything Ive missed please let me know.

Cheers.

Pete.