Topic: Spiced Oil

[martinvic]

Hey Chris

Did you ever taste the onion solids left over from making your spiced oil?

Only asking because it is almost the same ingredients as bunjarra/onion paste, of which the excess oil from it is great to use.

Martin

[ELW]

Anyone looking to re create an old style bhoona may do well to look into this. More meat stock &  less gravy. Maybe even in vegetable dishes

ELW

I wouldn't dispute the extra loveliness that a good meat stock will add to a curry but I can tell you with 100% certainty that it's not necessary for the old style bhuna flavour. Nor for that matter is a base sauce.

How do I know?

About 20 years ago I was in a rush to get out and I very hastily cobbled together a curry from raw ingredients, traditional style, no BIR practices whatsoever. Anyway, because I was simultaneously getting ready I forgot the pan and returned to what I was sure was a burnt curry in the making. Being Hank Marvin, I persevered and what do you know - it had the absolutely authentic BIR flavour of Bhuna - absolutely no mistake, I mean exactly!  ;D

Regretfully I forgot what I did and what ingredients I used, so I was never able to reproduce it (and I regularly curse myself for the loss ever since). 

Starting out on curry from very late 80's, I don't even know what the "old school,skool" curries tasted like santa. What I do know 
through ocd like observations is that the 350 odd ml of of watery onion gravy applied across the board in dishes isn't how my
favourite places do their dishes. In some of the dishes, the cooked meats together with the  tarka were almost a curry in itself. Then only a couple of thick chefs spoon of base were added
rather than what now seen in the videos. The Indian Ocean Karahi Vid Dalpuri posted is almost identical to the method i saw, which produces a completely different thing.
Madras/basic curry etc, which is lots of sauce, was more standard as we now know it, albeit with ladles of meat & cooking liquor,
which looked like oil rather than water, added. Not just the meat pieces as seen in many vids.

Regards
ELW

[ELW]

Hi
I've often wondered if spiced oil as a recipe came about because the FSA were finding bad practice in curry houses ?
Regards

Good Post commis - it may well have been, it does seem like a workaround which may have stayed