Topic: Why not more basic?

[norvegicusbass]

There seems to be lots and lots of different recipes for base sauces but many of them seem to be like mini curry recipes in theselves. I would have thought that a base by virtue of its name alone would be very basic perhaps only having three or four ingredients and be almost devoid of spices. Why do so many base sauces include many of the spices that you would add whilst cooking anyway?

[natterjak]

Because the brief final cook the BIRs carry out when the dish is prepared for the customer doesn't allow long enough to cook the spices in such a way as to develop their full flavours, as you can if you cook them into the base sauce. BIR is about building up layers of flavour, many of which are in that base sauce, so yes the spices in the base are important.

[Stephen Lindsay]

In theory a base could have few ingredients - onion, garlic, ginger, oil and water and a few spices. Bruce Edwards has experimented with this I believe. In reality however a lot of bases really are quite simple and making a batch in bulk means that they are less less mini curry recipes - you can get 8/9 portions from 1 kg of onions and making a 2 kg recipe is no more difficult. But as natterjack says the base is the core of the curry which is then customised to the individual recipe.

[snoopy]

tired a mates base sauce the other day that was just, onions, tin toms, g and g paste and turmeric with a pinch of salt. It made a very good tasting curry.

im sure most TA's base's would be as basic as possible from a price point of view.

[Stephen Lindsay]

Some of the bases on this site come from takeaways and they are not the most basic - some recipes have additional ingredients that may represent the chef's "signature" or perhaps because they want to make a rich base - price isn't always the defining factor, sometimes quality is.

[snoopy]

i agree some may put quality over cost, but alot wont. the trouble is alot of people want to pay four or five pounds for a curry and expect it to be a high quality. id rather pay for what im after.

[chilli chopper]

Hi all,

Thought I'd chime in here too.  I agree with the original poster who questions why so many base sauce recipes are so strongly flavoured.

I have tried the base sauce in 2 restaurants/takeaways. Both were very bland tasting, with the overwhelming flavour being onion. Both of these places produce some great curries using their bases, which have 'that' BIR taste. So from my own personal experience, I know for sure that a strongly spiced/flavoured base is not required to get the BIR taste. That said, the taste (I think) was not exactly the same as when I make a base sauce at home.

I have tried a few base recipes at home ranging from the very simple Kris Dhillon base (not much more than onions/toms with a bit of G/G and tumeric), the Bruce Edwards one (with more veg and mixed powder) to the Kushi base which turns out to be quite strongly flavoured. Of the three I prefer the KD one since you have much more freedom when it comes to adding powders to be fried during the balti cooking stage. I have made some curries using this base that I have been very happy with.

That said, I'm still to make one that beats a GOOD BIR curry (there are some very poor ones out there that are easy to better).

On a side note, I'm not a 'set in my ways' bloke, so I'm looking just now for a different base recipe and mix powder to try, to see if I can get closer to that perfect BIR flavour. I am happy to be proved wrong about my 'simpler the better' base theory. I do suspect, however, that a good portion of the BIR 'thing' is psychological. I'd love to arrange / participate in a blind taste test comparing curry house curries to home made attempts to see if people can really tell which are which.

[chillihothot]

I am happy to be proved wrong about my 'simpler the better' base theory. I do suspect, however, that a good portion of the BIR 'thing' is psychological. I'd love to arrange / participate in a blind taste test comparing curry house curries to home made attempts to see if people can really tell which are which.

I've only been making curries for a couple years but I agree with you. I have tried different spice blends and bases and to be honest, I don't notice an enormous difference in terms of impact. Taste, yes, but impact - not in my opinion.

I have even started experimenting by adding new veg like shredded cabbage to my base and all sorts of different spices. I don't really prefer any one significantly over any other. All are fairly good.

(For me fresher spices is what has the biggest impact on the finished product. It tends to be the most vibrant - although im getting sidetracked here).

Anyway as part of my experimenting I asked my g/f to make a curry this time. I showed her how to make it using the same methods and ingredients, and base that I use and so on. I locked myself away behind 2 closed doors upstairs and waited for the "dinners ready" call.

When I walked into the kitchen, the impact of the smell between when I prepare curry and what I just smelt was profound. It was much better than my curries. Now there's three explanations I could think of 1) she is better at cooking than me 2) its psychological 3) the sudden impact to my sense of smell.

I suspect the main reason is factors 2 & 3.

[chilli chopper]

I suspect the main reason is factors 2 & 3.

Yes I agree with you there. When you cook your nose is bombarded with aroma particles and soon becomes used to them so you no longer can smell them. So walking into a kitchen to be hit by all the aromas is quite a different experience to cooking yourself. Bruce Edwards talks about this in his Curry House Cookery. I've had a similar experience when my brother cooks curry. I think often they can taste better than mine. But he says the same of my curries!

I really do think the psychological factor is significant. I'm going off on a tangent from the original post but this interests me a lot! I mean let's compare the two briefly:

Cook at home:
--------------
Requires effort (even though we all love it), nose bombarded with cooking smells, can be a little stressful (prep, remembering recipes, washing up, cleaning, mess), there is a chance it might not turn out well (happens to all of us at some point) which itself can induce a little stress, you know that YOU have cooked it, there is less anticipation since you make it yourself, you have to serve yourself etc etc

Restuarant / T/A:
--------------
more sense of excitement / anticipation, choosing what to order gets your imagination going and tastebuds tingling, you get that aroma hit when you first smell the curry, no stress with cleaning / washing up/ cooking, it's a 'real' BIR curry, etc.

So even if the curry you made was 100% identical to the take away one, you can be pretty sure the t/a one will taste better to you.

Back on topic, another thing I find with base sauce with more spices/powders in them is that it is easier to hit that spice saturation point when you cook the curry. I'm sure this has happened to most of you when you add too much spice powder and you end up being able to feel the spices in your mouth. It almost tastes powdery, like you can feel too much powder on your tongue when you eat the curry.

I think the less spice powder in the base, the more you can add during the balti cooking phase (before hitting the spice threshold mentioned above) where you directly fry the spices in oil. We all know that frying spices in oil extracts more flavour than boiling them (which is what happens in most base recipes) so logically you would think it would be better to add more during the frying stage than boiling stage. At least that's how it seems to me. Again, I could be wrong.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Your analysis seems spot-on to me, CC.
** Phil.