Hi Mamta,
I haven't cooked Indian food in such a long time that I seem to have forgotten how to :( I needed to cook some beef, and decided to make a curry instead of a mediterranean dish. I followed the recipe for basic curry sauce, although not using exact measures.
The sauce looked great, but there was something missing! In fact, our bolivian babysitter who doesn't know curries tasted it and said, there was something missing! I couldn't figure what. I managed to make it better by adding more garam masala, but it still wasn't perfect and was slightly bitter.
I cooked the beef in the sauce in a pressure cooker to avoid the 2 hour cooking time.
I know I didn't get the onion paste right. After a lot of oil and a fair bit of frying all i had was a greenish gray mush (yuk) which started catching at the bottom, instead of a golden brown translucent paste. I guess it was because i used spanish white onions. I easily get white onions or the completely red varieties... never the pale purple of indian onions.
I wish you could taste it and tell me whats wrong! Sigh. Technology isn't there yet :)
cheers
sangeetha
The recipes tend to be about right, so altering things without knowing why can cause a serious change in taste.
You might also find that spices have gone off and lose their taste.
I find ground black pepper from the Indian Grocers is far hotter than ground black pepper from the supermarket etc so it might be you need more of a spice depending on what it is and where its from... Same goes for things like onions and garlic as their taste and strength can vary dramatically
Pressure cooking gets hotter that normal cooking so could affect taste as well !
Steve
cooking (anything) is pretty straight forward for the experienced cook, but those not familiar with Indian cooking can find it hard going at first. One the method is learnt (and hopefully understood) it is easy.
Sangeetha, when browning onions there are a few things that help to get them right..
1 - the way you cut them up ! If you cut them into large chunks you struggle to get them to break down and turn into the brown paste you want (you just get burn't edges on a softened piece of onion). So you need to slice them up as thin as possible so they can break down properly.
2 - The pan you cook them in has to be a thick bottomed pan as thin bottomed ones tend to over heat a lot faster and makes it harder to keep control
3 - you need more than just a little oil but you aren't deep frying them ! Get enough oil in the pan so the onions get a good wetting but not flooding...if they look like they are getting too dry then add a little more oil...
3 - DO NOT LEAVE THEM ALONE ! make sure you won't need to go and do anything else once you have put the onions in. You need to do a lot of stiring (and I mean right across the pan's base so nothing gets the chance to stick) The hotter the pan the more you have to stir, keep going until the onions are the sticky brown you require..
Steve
guest, you are discussing 'indian restaurant' cooking. Fortunately, this site discusses pukka Indian food! There is no need for bad tasting short cut cooking here, only the best will do!
I'm sure that Indian restaurant food has it's followers and I'm not about tell people whether they're right or wrong, but personally I don't like the stuff myself. Having said that, there used to be a bengali restaurant near here and their onion bhajis were the nicest I've ever tasted. I've invented my own onion bhaji recipe and it's as close to theirs as I can get. I once ordered a chicken vindaloo from an Indian take away and when I opened it half of it was sauce and the other half was oil... Yum!
Sad thing is, I AM Indian, the real deal all the way from the motherland ;) So I was looking for something homey, definitely not the takeaway kinds.
And yet I got it wrong.
And I used approx measures because the curries tend to vary from home to home anyway... but this will be the last time i do that :)
Steve, you could be right both about the spices, and the onion. I should get a fresh batch of spices. As for the onions, I wasn't careful at all, didn't give it enough attention. Also I made a paste before cooking. My mother always said that soaks up a lot of oil, and browning the onions before grinding them always brings better results.
I'll write back the next time I make the sauce, see if it turns out better.
I burnt my son's carrot sabji whilst writing this post!!!!!!!!!!!!! Really!
I think browning the onions is one of the most important things about cooking a curry. I use a cast iron pan to cook most of my food -- including Indian -- with the exception of using the pressure cookers from time to time for cooking lentils and beans. I normally spend about 20?25 minutes browning the onions. I start on a medium?high heat (for frying the whole spices) and then I add the onion, garlic, and ginger and cook it for about five minutes until I notice the ginger staring to stick, then I turn it down to low and cook the mixture really slowly until it is golden brown.
I know this has nothing to do with the thread, but I just don't understand what the fascination is about alcohol. I don't like alcohol but I will drink it just to be 'sociable' -- and being sociable by British standards seems to be about drinking poison. Tonight I drank a supposedly 10 year old wine, and to be honest it was just like drinking vinegar, call me what you want, but I just don't get it! Wine must be one of those things that actually grows in value as it gets older...other things have sell-by dates...get me a vine yard...
Sangeetha: a basic law for any cookery is this: never start cooking something and then go on the net while it's cooking.
I've made this mistake often: it's fatal!
It's even true of slow-cooking dishes, up to a point.
Phil
I had some rather not al dente pasta last night for that very reason Phil.. put it on to boil, got reading on here and .. oh hang on wasn't I doing something... lol
Steve
My wife and I went out to our favourite Indian restaurant the other night for our anniversary. We shared a chicken tikka for starters and then Lisa had saag lamb and I had my favourite chicken vindaloo. We both thoroughly enjoyed it...I was in heaven. Ive being going there for the past 18 years. I like their food and I like the food I cook at home with mamtas recipes. I reckon my saag lamb better but would kill to get their vindaloo recipe.
Cheers
Steve
Butter them up and ask. Sometimes they let you come into the kitchen and watch!
Sangeetha
You are absolutely right that each home has it's own recipe and so there are many, many variants. However, what I would suggest is to follow a new recipe as closely as you possibly can the first time you make it. After that, you can assess what worked for you and what you might like to change, depending on your personal tastes and preferences. But if you follow the recipe accurately the first time, you have a better basis for deciding what to change when you make it the second time!
Good luck!
Kavita
but that assumes you have cooked it the way it was intended, the first time! Sometimes it takes me three or four goes to get it as it should be, that is, if I know what it is supposed to be like!
Some of the 'easiest' recipes are the most difficult to get just right, which must come down to technique. Eggs come to mind here, even cooking the perfect 6 minute boiled egg is not guaranteed, everytime!
6 minutes for a boiled egg ???? we get xtra large chickens eggs and they only take 3 minutes for soft boiled... !
Steve