The Hierophant

Great, that’s been my experience too.

How were they?

@The Fox Al’s Base gravy 2. It’s the more elaborate one. I’ll probably try the Misty Ricardo one at some point but I’m sticking to what works for now.

Made a fresh batch of base gravy last night. It’s so easy. The most work is peeling the onions. As to cost, the only things we bought to make this batch was the onions, a cabbage, condensed milk and a bunch of coriander. Everything else we either has anyway or from previous batches of base gravy. I also reckon I’ll buy some more onions and coriander and make another batch to use up some of the cabbage and condensed milk.

Just checking in to say, I hope everything is okay Clipper.

Hope you’re okay @Clipper

We had a takeaway last night out of laziness. We both agreed that the homemade versions are better!

Nearly ready for 6mm napoleonics.

I have quite a few musician friends who have been suffering as a result of lockdown. They’ll likely be the last out as well New Order’s US Tour and O2 gig moved to next year. But they are releasing a crew T-shirt for sale. 100% of the proceeds go to the crew. If you like New order or you like live music, but one: https://store.neworder.com/uk/touring-technique-crew-t-shirt.html

No but if you are going to make curries and Chilli and soup be stuff you need cumin. By whole seeds and grind when needed and it will last ages.

I struggle to see how that can be right I am afraid. The base gravy is made from stuff we generally have already or would buy as part of the weekly shop. Even if you had to start from scratch you’ll have loads of spices left over. One batch probably makes a dozen portions. Edit: I need to make a batch. I’ll work out how much it costs me and how much base I get.

The ghee definitely adds flavour but I don’t always use it and when I do I use only a small amount using olive oil or coconut oil for the rest of the fat. You can definitely use less than the recipes suggest as well.

Over the years, yes I have tried many times at making curry without base gravy. I have a huge number of cookery books and given my love of curry quite a few are for Indian recipes. I’ve had mixed success with these, some have been good and some have been pretty poor. The results are probably down to me as much as the recipes. But they have never really been Indian restaurant style curry. Some have been close and some very good even if not in the BIR style. To get those sort of results you really need to use a curry base. It’s isn’t much effort to make then base at its basically throw everything in, cook blend, cook. It then takes very little time to make the curries. Which is why it’s the method used in restaurants. Lots of prep and then everything cooked to order.

They’re great books. I have been using Al’s Base Gravy 2 with these recipes and I think I have found curry nirvana. Last nights results were as good as last week’s. Bhuna: Garlic Chili Chicken Phaal.

I did a Bhuna for the ladies. My daughter said it was better than a restaurant. I though she was being kind but the results were good. A bit later I made a garlic chilli chicken extra hot based on Misty’s Phall recipe. OMFG! It was the best curry I have ever eaten anywhere in my entire life. (I may have been a bit intoxicated, but still.) It really was that good. One thing I did differently was pre cook the chicken. In the past I have either cooked it in the pan or, more often, used chicken tikka that has been cooked over charcoal on the BBQ. I don’t know why I bothered. Misty recommends pre cooking the chicken by poaching in water with Tumeric, cloves and cardomon. He then stores it in a base gravy sauce. I was using it straight away, well almost so didn’t bother with that. I’ll be honest I was sceptical. However it was really good and very moist. I think that was because it’s only poached for 8-10 minutes and then put in cold water to stop it cooking. I’m planning on doing this again tonight but to be honest I’m a bit scared I won’t be able to replicate last week’s success.