Topic: Top 5 Revelations

[chriswg]

Over the last 6 - 12 months my curry cooking has come on leaps and bounds. I thought I'd share my top 5 revelations (in no particular order) and it would be good to hear everyone elses.

1) Cook the curries in veg ghee instead of veg oil.

2) Spices need to be charred (not totally burned) at the initial stage - be brave.

3) G/G paste needs to be cooked longer than you think - aim for medium brown in colour.

4) I always precook my chicken or lamb on the BBQ in a tikka marinade - see below - (whole or half chicken breasts that are then sliced and added to the curry). If I'm adding onions or green pepper to a curry I precook these by lightly frying them in G/G paste.

5) Pataks Tikka, Tandoori and Kashmiri Massala pastes should always be in your curry cupboard.

I hope this helps some of you save some experimentation time. It would be great to hear what other suggestions people can add to the list.

<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_8ZixU3Nbf9c/TaL2Upkbz9I/AAAAAAAAAmQ/meCBc_iT8DQ/s800/IMAG0093.jpg" height="478" width="800" />

[Peripatetic Phil]

For me : "simpler is better".  The Taz-base reduction method is tedious, fills the house with smells that SWMBO objects to, and produces results that are inferior (IMHO, of course) to the far simpler modified KD method.  Last night I forgot to add the cumin, and still produced a perfectly acceptable Chicken Madras (spicing : Bassar curry masala, Degghi Mirch, Kashmiri mirch, Methi leaf, frozen coriander stem).  I sometimes think we are in grave danger of making this whole exercise considerably more complex than it need be !

To comment in Chris's specific points :

1) Cook the curries in veg ghee instead of veg oil.

Not tried : will need to do so.

2) Spices need to be charred (not totally burned) at the initial stage - be brave.

I do exactly the opposite, and bhoon the mirch and BCM as gently as possible.

3) G/G paste needs to be cooked longer than you think - aim for medium brown in colour.

Definitely worth an experiement.

4) I always precook my chicken or lamb on the BBQ in a tikka marinade - see below - (whole or half chicken breasts that are then sliced and added to the curry).

I pre-cook mine by bhooning in remaindered curry sauce !

If I'm adding onions or green pepper to a curry I precook these by lightly frying them in G/G paste.

To be tried.

5) Pataks Tikka, Tandoori and Kashmiri Massala pastes should always be in your curry cupboard.

I use none of these.

** Phil.

[Malc.]

Revelations? hmm, I think my entire journey so far has been 1 big revelation and as it isn't anywhere near finished yet, it would be hard for me to say. However, things I feel of noteable value would be:
 
1. Pan size is crucial to getting the correct portion size to cook properly.

2. Technique and procedure are crucial to getting the right taste for specific dishes. Charring of spices adds a deep smoky/chocolaty taste and aroma for instance.

3. Panch Phoran and it's use of, and how varied pre-cook techniques are between one BIR/TA to the next.

4. The use of Masala Sauce and other components such as pickle etc., in main dishes.

5. The importance of keeping an open mind.

[chriswg]

Phil, a quick note on the pastes. Lots of people (myself included) wanted to be able to cook BIR curries without 'cheating' but the simple fact is, most of the takeaways in Fleet use those 3 for various things.

The Kashmiri Massala expecially is very useful. I add some into my onion bhajis, chicken tikka marinade, massala sauce and shiek kebabs. If you try Dips tikka marinade which is heavily reliant on pastes you will see what I mean. Keeping an open mind is what this is all about.

Axe, I totally agree on the pan size. My 20cm aluminium skillet pan works well for me but anything from 20 - 24cm should be fine. I also bought a 20cm cast iron pan just for flambeeing the garlic.

[Stephen Lindsay]

Revelations - good post Chris and it made me think about what mine have been.

- Bruce Edward's articles in The Curry Club magazine all those years back
- Discovering the concept of the curry base
- Making my first Butter Chicken and finding that it was extremely tasty
- Panpot's Ashoka posts on this site
- Packman's naan recipe on here

[chriswg]

Pacmans Naan recipe looks really good. I'm not sure how I managed to miss it when I was trialling recipes about a year ago. Here is the link if anyone wants it:

http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=1870.0

[Peripatetic Phil]

Both Chris & Axe have emphasised the importance of keeping an open mind, and I apologise if I seemed to be presenting instead a closed one, which was not my intention.  Rather, I wanted to say that I had tried new, different, ideas, but some (such as the Taz base / reduction method) had not seemed to lead to a discernible improvement, and had led to extra work which I felt was not justified by the results.  I have used pastes, in the past, and they represented a distinct improvement over anything I had tried before, but now I feel I have "progressed" beyond needing pastes, and use (as far as possible) individual spices, the sole exception being Bassar Curry Masala which is so complex that I cannot see any point in trying to replicate it from scratch.  But I remain open to new ideas, will try cooking the g/g paste to the point of browning, and will try vegetable ghee instead of vegetable oil.  I am less inclined to pre-cook on a barbecue, simply because that seems (to me) more appropriate for a chicken-tilkka based dish (which I never order by choice) rather than a dish based on freshly cooked, non-tikkad, chicken.  Charred spices ?  I think SWMBO would complain very loudly and at great length ...

** Phil.

[emin-j]

I thought Vegetable Ghee was nasty stuff  ' trans fats ' or something.

[chriswg]

I wouldn't recommend drinking Vegetable Ghee, but a bit in a curry once a weeks isn't going to do any harm. I think most burger / kebab places cook their chips in trans fats. Like anything, it is okay in moderation.

[Malc.]

You get almost 3 times as much Trans Fatty Acids in regular butter than you do in Veg Ghee, which has zero cholesterol too.
Of course you knew i'd take the bait.  ;D