Tell me the curry secret!!?

[MermaidTears]

To ask if anyone out there knows the secret. Or has a husband who works in an Indian restaurant and knows?

We have a curry every single Saturday night, our long running tradition.
We just worked out we spend around 1300 a year on takeaways! 25 every Saturday (roughly)

I have tried every single recipe, every book, every supermarket Fakeaway they never taste like the restaurant ones!

We have been to Goa and the food was heavenly.
There must be a secret ingredient that I don't know? Anyone out there know?

We need to cut back our finances, and tbh what we spend on takeaways could pay for half towards our trip to Goa

I did two terms of Indian cooking at a local college. Home cooking Gujurati style. Not like restaurant curries - better. My OH was in heaven when I brought home what I'd made. However the recipes specified far more salt than I'd normally use. I still use the recipes especially the chick pea one.

I am Indian and my mother is a fabulous cook. I think I am okay although husband adores my cooking and will probably still want me to send him food if we break up.

First of all you have to understand that some of your favourites in the Indian restaurants here were created for westerners and do not exist in India. Secondly there is a North and South divide in all things including cuisine in India.

The North use yogurt to thicken the curry whilst South Indians use coconut curry to give depth and flavour. They also use more spices and chilli powder. In some South Indian kitchens, they have two types of masala - one for meat and the other for seafood.

In Southern kitchens they marinate the meat/chicken with ginger, garlic and shallot paste to flavour and tenderise the meat. Curry leaves are used to flavour and tint the cooking oil, along with cardomons (for meat), cinnamon sticks, black pepper etc. Once the spices have been infused into the oil, curry powder is added followed by the meat and slow cooked until tender. Thick coconut milk, par boiled potatoes and tomatoes added. Add salt and later before finishing, to taste to see if it needs more chilli powder or salt.

The lower the region in India, the spicier the food. Northerners eat more bread and less spicy food plus things like tandoori while South like dosa, steamed rice cakes, chapati (strictly speaking more punjab but south like it now too) and rice.

"I've tried yogurt for the sauce but in my experience, it always separates and doesn't seem as creamy"

Kala you need to use full fat yogurt. Low fat always splits when heated. The other option is to stabilise it by mixing a bit of cornflour into it.

Oh god, the Curry Secret book is up there with one of the worst recipe books we ever bought. We gave it to the charity shop. The base sauce is bloody awful and we cook a LOT of home made curries with spice mix all from scratch etc and often in the slow cooker so I know what a nice smell in the house should be like when I come in from work. This was horrendous. HORRENDOUS. It just didn't smell right somehow. Made me retch. We persevered and did a couple of the recipes but really weren't impressed. We threw the rest of the base sauce out. Not sure what country the book was from but it did NOT taste like British curry house curry.

We have a lot of takeaways also and eaten out at many different Indian (Asian) restaurants. I've noticed a trend in the posher ones to a lighter more authentic recipe rather than the old fashioned curry Flavours. We have a few curry recipe books and rate Madhur Jaffrey if you want authentic flavours of the countries the recipes are from.

But it seems you want old-fashioned British curry house curry, OP, so maybe not for you.

I recommend Madhur Jaffrey's books 'curry nation' - which contains curry house recipes, and for "home cooking" recipes - 'a taste of india'.

This thread is making my mouth water!

Thank you OP for starting this thread, and everybody who replied to it. My semi-monthly "Oh my God, I have no food in the house" dal was so much better yesterday than it normally is, even though I used the same recipe. (Even without fresh spices, etc.)

Madhuban honey garden sauces - amazing if you can't get to the actual restaurant!

like an Italian who can cook the best Italian or French cooks the best French cuisine.its in the blood I find.the knack of it.the growing up with it in the family etc.i expect you couldn't go into your local Chinese and cook like they do either.so nothing your doing wrong hun.
this iS NOT COMING FROM A IGNORANT OR RACIST PLACE IF IT SOUND IT; but if you want into your lovely curry house I doubt youd find many of non indian or family members in there.i could be totally wrong there please don't hurt me!!

cooking I mean,the chefs

My neighbours are Bengali.
The smells from there house are incredible.
I'm trying to befriend them so they can tech me to cook!

I make pretty good Indian food I think. I'm not keen on the Curry House sort of curries - they don't taste like proper Indian food to me and as a vegetarian I find them frequently disappointing.

So if anyone likes Gurjarati food, I recommend the Prashad book by Kaushi Patel. It's amazing. I have a very impressive spice drawer as a result

I made this aloo matar recipe for dinner tonight, along with a blitzed cashew milk curry with veggie koftas. Was recommended it by a friend, really easy, one pot, and properly tasty. I'm putting it in my recipe folder. Potatoes, peas and gravy, mmmm.

kala I'm a veggie dhansak kinda girl. Any ideas? Also was hoping to make samosas, but cheat and use the ready to roll filo

You do not use filo for samosas.

Flour, some fat and water are all you need. Filo is just wrong. About 1/5 oil or ghee to the amount of flour then a bit of water to bind - add salt to taste, some people add other bits and pieces.

Although to be honest, I usually just go to the sweet centre.

Samosas really aren't as hard work as I thought they might be. The Prashad book as a great recipe and step by step guide to folding them up. Lots of other recipes for amazing little snacky things too, like muttar katchoris. It's a must have book, especially for veggies.

I have a small book called 59 Great Curries of India by Camellia Panjabi that has some amazing recipes. They all ask for spice blends ground from scratch so it's not so good for quick curries but because you learn all the separate ingredients it's fab for understanding the processes and spices better.

Mermaidtears im bengali too ;) everyone talks about north and south indian food, but bengali food is not really covered. If like me you are a bangla whose parents come from syhlet (most the banglas in the west), then we dont use yoghurts in our curries or coconut milk, and we dont roast and grind spices a lot. I think its undiscovered food. Well you can get it in East london im sure but the western media hasn't caught up with it yet so the masses dont know about it. i could be wrong...

with your neighbours say hello offer something like homemade cakes or biscuits, come Eid, which is september id be very shocked if they didnt give you a platter of mixed Eid food ;). I hope theyre not bad cooks lol

my mum would always give the neighbours food whether they asked for it or not. she'd even have them over for dinner on special occasions or the weekends

i may be asian but i also look up indian recipes because it's vast depending on region. ie dosa banglas in the region my parents come from dont have it at home, although im sure it is street food. in dakah or kalkutta they would have it.

Anyway ive made dosas once and they were a success, bloody nice too :)

i make paneer a lot, its actually pretty easy, its not something i grew up with, but im the only one in my house who loves it, its akin to tofu to me, love that too.

regarding samosas, these days a lot of asians use frozen spring roll pastry, they cut it into 3 or 4 rectangles and make the triangles. most asian stores and even big supermarkets stock them. I DETEST spring roll pastry, i must be the only one. Come eid i always reject every samosa hosts give me, i just pretend i have an allergy.

plain flour oil water, pinch salt, google recipe.

if you must use frozen in the big asian stores, especially pakistani or arab stores, look for "sambusa" pastry, its cut into rectangle strips already. The pastry tastes fabulous compared with spring roll, if im making big batches of samosas i use that. But it can crack easily, so use it fast once defrosted and keep it under wrap with a moist hot towel. i do throw some strips away too cracked to use.

there are 2 ppl with channels on youtube and websites i follow a lot and ive done many of her recipes with success i.e paneer. not sure if im allowed to mention them here

kata that all sounds fab!
They haven't been here long but I shall gift them some cakes come Eid next month!

Google Tarla Dalal or vegrecipesofindia. These are the sites Indian women go to for curry ideas, and they're as authentic as it's possible to get.

A tip: make the sauce in advance & instead of microwaving to reheat, temper it again with mustard/cumin and crushed peanuts. When all the ingrediants are in add ghee/cream. Should give you a restaurant quality meal.

everyone talks about north and south indian food, but bengali food is not really covered.

SHhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Yep I'm about half way between an Indian Indian and a Bengali 'Indian' take away.

The Bengali one has some lovely fish recipes, the Indian one has some interesting lamb cutlets.

Plus it's always fun to ask for 'fanny' to drink.