Topic: How to make Indian Kashmiri Masala Paste, one you're not supposed to know about!

[h4ppy-chris]

I think the lads at your TA have swerved on the fresh garlic/ginger Chris.

Rob 

[chewytikka]

Nice one H4ppy, This will be very handy for all the ex-pats, that cannot get Pataks.

cheers Chewy

[h4ppy-chris]

Nice one H4ppy, This will be very handy for all the ex-pats, that cannot get Pataks.

cheers Chewy

Chewy IF you ever make this, you will never use (Pataks) again......

[mickdabass]

Cant understand why anyone would use any Patak paste anyway. Deffo not old school BIR in my humble opinion

[goncalo]

Deffo not old school BIR in my humble opinion

Not everyone seeks the old school curries, Also, some members reported that old school BIR made their own pastes. This may be an alternative paste recipe used back in the day.

[mickdabass]

Not everyone seeks the old school curries, Also, some members reported that old school BIR made their own pastes. This may be an alternative paste recipe used back in the day.

Very likely the case. I shall definitely give this a go as I rate h4ppy-chris' input to the forum quite highly.Without going off topic, Its just that Pataks pastes have that horrible "tang" that spoils curries - in my humble opinion anyway

[DalPuri]

There was a very similar paste posted by a member of the other site a couple of years ago.

Whole spices
Tablespoon coriander seeds
Tablespoon cumin seeds
Tablespoon black pepper

[h4ppy-chris]

Not everyone seeks the old school curries, Also, some members reported that old school BIR made their own pastes. This may be an alternative paste recipe used back in the day.

Very likely the case. I shall definitely give this a go as I rate h4ppy-chris' input to the forum quite highly.Without going off topic, Its just that Pataks pastes have that horrible "tang" that spoils curries - in my humble opinion anyway

This has a tang but, not as strong as Pataks. If anyone likes that tang add 1 more TBsp of vinegar.
If you make it to spec let me know what you think.

[Kashmiri Bob]

Some BIR chefs do still make their pastes from scratch.  It may be a more widespread practice than we think.  I know one chef in particular and the only ready-made he uses is pataks balti paste.  Took me a while to figure out what was going on.  When I first saw the pastes (lined up in various pots) I thought, yup, pataks.  There were after all several catering size jars on the kitchen shelves.  I did note the ones the chef used had asian bay sticking out of them, but I dismissed this as insignificant; figured he was just tweaking the pataks, somehow. Plus, in this kitchen, asian bay also went into pretty much everything you can think of.

Later however I learned that the pastes (kashmiri, tandoori, pathia, and others) were all made by the chef himself. He explained that the jar pastes were just unsuitable for making most curries, especially kashmiri. Too "strong". He went on to say that the pastes were expensive, not in terms of the ingredient prices, but they are extremely time-consuming to make.  I gather the process he uses is somewhat more involved than Chris' demo.  It requires many bagar stages, possibly over several days. I know the chef quite well now and did query the reason for all the pataks jars in the kitchen.  Answer?  "Tandoori chef".  He has actually promised to show me how all the pastes are made. One issue though, he is fairly confident that even when shown it will be very difficult for me to reproduce the flavours consistently.  I'll have a good go though.  Would love to get to grips with the pathia paste. A touch of this (really just a touch) goes in the chef's jalfrezi dishes. Mind-blowing curry!

All good stuff though.  Very much looking forward to Chris' book.  The little edges/tricks/secrets that some of the chefs have are slowly being recognised/identified, which is nice to see. 

Rob           

[Garp]

Personally, I would never use Pataks or any other commercially-produced paste.

I realise that they may be used in some BIRs, but that doesn't mean I want to use them too. My desire when joining this forum was to create restaurant style curries from basic ingredients - not necessarily to make them in exactly the same way as a TA (I don't want to make a curry in 10 minutes). Half the fun for me is seeing how to achieve the same results without using things like Pataks.

For me, if you're going to use these shop-bought pastes, you might as well just buy a takeaway.

Just my opinion though