Folks,

For many years now I have been working closely with home style Indian cooking. I remember quite some time ago trying to recreate a restaurant style curry using loads of onions and blending up with garlic and ginger etc. I think I took the recipe from a book I once had and have since lost by 'kriss Dhillon' Has anyone had any good experiences with this style of cooking and are there any handy recipes or tips I could refer to either from yourselves or on this site?

Thanks

James.

James,

I would suggest this is not the right forum for a request for such a recipe, although Mamta is extremely kind, and would probably give suggestions.

In a way, 'Indian restaurant'-like dishes are at the other end of the culinary spectrum from Mamta's recipes, and for a very good reason. I have tried to help others with a 'curry gravy' type of restaurant dish, but I can't say it even approached any of Mamta's 'real Indian' recipes.

If you really want a go, just fry off lots of veg (usual suspects), add any spices, fry the meat separately, then combine everything, that's how's it's done in most of the restaurants, except they use a large stock pot of veg, that's why all the dishes taste the same in any one restaurant, and different to the same dishes in other restaurants.

I purchased the kriss Dhillon book a number of years ago from a second hand books shop, and although the book produced mediocre results they were nothing like you'd get from a curry house.

I prefer good homemade Indian cooking to the restaurant stuff and if I'm lucky I eat Indian takeaway about once a year, but I eat proper Indian food on an almost daily basis at some stage.

You might want to check out This guy's youtube channel for an idea on making take away foods, and this is a shortcut to making the base sauce that's used in most indian take away curries, as Lapis has already pointed out.

Another thing with restaurant type cooking is that they do it on such a large scale that the margin for errors is huge.

If there were 'loads of onions,' looking at 'Dopyaza' curry recipes might be a good place to start.

I have tried marinating lamb with ginger garlic / paste and masalas beforehand (overnight) rather than browning all these with onions, the result was excellent.

I believe one of the biggest things about cooking with spices is how they are distributed throughout a dish: this is based on how soluble the flavour compounds are in either water or oil/fat. Most flavour compounds are more soluale in oil/fat than in water, so that a dish which has both oil/fat and water will have a more flavoursome oil/fat part. However, the proteins in meat have fat-like areas, called beta helices, where spice flavour compounds adhere (adsorb), so marinating meat in spices is a good way of flavouring meat.

Frying spices with onion only works well if there is no water present; this is best achieved if the onions are fried on medium heat until golden, then adding the spices. This way, the spice compounds are extracted into the oil/fat, rather than left in the spice if water were present.

Good one Lapis , point noted

James

No offence taken! Just that you'll find most of us here have more experience at the home-style dishes than restaurant ones.

I have come across recommendations for websites about restaurant-style but I can't recall the names at the moment, sorry!

Hope you'll stick around, try some of recipes from our site, and let us know how you get on!

Kavita (Mamta's daughter, site admin)

Kavey,

I'll certainly stick around. This is a great site and I have been using it for a couple of years off and on, but only recently been on the forum. I love the recipes on this site and I mostly prefer them to those in the 10 plus books I have collected over the years!

Also the site has been a great education for me as I am self taught with Indian cookery from books I have read over the last 15 years.

Keep up the great work!!!

James.

Sorry - last message was for Kavita!!!

Kavey = Kavita = Kav = KV

:)

Kavita is my real name, Kavey is my nickname, not just online but also in real life.

Glad to hear you've got so much out of the site... such comments always make it worthwhile!

:) :)