Chicken Andulan

[Natterjak]

Not a dish I've ever heard of before but I spotted it in the House Specialities section of the Monihar Tandoori in Slough. It's described thus: Phall Hot, with fresh ginger, garlic and green chilies.

As you can see they are not shy of presenting their food with a massive oil slick on the top, but surely this is the old fashioned BIR way? Based on the taste of their food I'm convinced this place still cooks in the traditional BIR way, none of the low fat healthy nonsense here. The flavour of this dish was great but boy did I underestimate my chilli threshold. Phall heat was way too much for me and it was painful to eat.

I'll be returning to order again from Monihar and will concentrate on the more traditional dishes like madras etc.

image.jpg (141.51 KiB) Viewed 7648 times

[Cory Ander]

Plenty of oil on top of this one (not a dish I've ever heard of either). Arrrrgh! I do miss a really stinking hot phal!

I notice, from their website, that the owner/chef is "himself a chef of over two decades experience". I guess that takes him back to the early 90s?

[jerrym]

the oil on top is another of those things i keep pondering - is the oil there at the end of cooking or when it gets home in the foil container or is it just down to the amount of oil added at the start (or in the base)

pretty much every curry i make never has oil on top. i use 1 chef of oil. i feel it gets burned off during the hot fry. i have to increase the oil to say 6 tbsp to get any oil on the surface.

what i have noticed is that if by error i end up cooking passed my normal end point i seem to end up getting oil on the surface. because it's intermittent i've never been able to work out if it's actually the oil separating out (i would expect this to happen whilst the dish is being eaten - which does not happen) or that it's simply down to not burning as much off.

what i'm getting at is that BIR seem to leave the pan on low light after finishing cooking - is there something in this or not.

[rshome123]

I'm not as experienced as you, but I tend also to use 1 csp to start a curry. I feel that amount of oil gets 'absorbed' into the other ingredients with very little floating oil in the finished product. So, there seems to be a point at which any extra oil becomes 'floaty' and obvious when serving up. The extra oil looks good in the dish, and of course transmutes flavour, although adding to the waistline.

[goncalo]

My understanding is that in order for the oil to separate nicely your g&g mustn't be too thick and the base must be blended well as well. I find that if either is thicker, the oil just won't separate very well in the dish. I've made a ceylon tonight and the oil separated nicely at the end, in the last 2mins after I lowered the heat.

Bengali Bob's curries always have that little layer of oil as well.

[Cory Ander]

My understanding is that in order for the oil to separate nicely your g&g mustn't be too thick and the base must be blended well as well

Interesting observations, Goncalo. Can I ask from where you developed this understanding? I personally doubt either has a significant effect.

In my opinion, i think that if your final curry is too thin (i.e.too watery) then the oil will be more difficult to separate. But if the oil is in there, it will separate (with prolonged heating and reduction of the water content).

Just blitz any curry (or curry base) that has significant oil content in it, in a microwave, on high, for several minutes, to demonstrate that to be the case.

Therefore, if the oil isn't separating, I believe one or more of the following probably applies:

• The oil isn't there (in significant quantities) in the first place
• The dish is too thin/watery
• Insufficient heating and reduction of water content has been accomplished

[goncalo]

The G&G tip I picked up from a video from "vah re va chef", where he fries the onions in more oil than he needed and then reclaims the oil, stating that he didn't add g&g before because otherwise it's a lot hard for the oil to be claimed as it will cling to the other ingredients in the pan more easily. I thought I had added it to my youtube indian food playlist but I don't seem to. I'll try to find the video in the browser history at home. As for the base, I noticed in recent "experiments" that the oil does not separate/rise to surface as nicely if my base is too thick.

[Natterjak]

I don't think oil separation which denotes a dish being fully cooked has anything to do with evaporation of the water content. If that were the case oil separation would occur only depending on the initial level of dilution of the base and the oil content and would therefore say nothing about whether the curry was fully cooked or not.

It's about a change in the chemistry - the little floating onion and spice molecules deciding they're now going to stick to each other and not hold as much oil around them as before. This is why IMHO at the same time the oil rises a thickening of the sauce at the bottom of the pan occurs, because the sticky stuff sinks down. It's what chef Harpal Singh describes as the masala becoming more cohesive in his most recent comment to this video:

[goncalo]

That sure sheds a light on it NJ. Thanks for clearing it up!

[Cory Ander]

I don't think oil separation which denotes a dish being fully cooked has anything to do with evaporation of the water content

I'm not sure about 2 aspects of your statement, NJ:

Firstly, I battle with the statement that "oil separation....denotes a dish being fully cooked". I understand that most of us (including me) take it as some sort of indication, but does it really indicate anything, at all, about the dish being "fully cooked" (whatever that might mean)? I suspect it is just a consequence/effect of the cooking method and, in reality, indicates very little about the dish being "fully cooked"?

Secondly, the ability of the oil to separate from the water must surely depend on the volumes of each present, the chemical and physical nature (and volumes) of other particulates (and other substances) present, and the application of heat and time? So the evaporation of water (and the resultant increase in the relative proportion of oil to water present) must have an effect on the ability of the oil to separate from the mix (emulsion)?

It's about a change in the chemistry - the little floating onion and spice molecules deciding they're now going to stick to each other and not hold as much oil around them as before. This is why IMHO at the same time the oil rises a thickening of the sauce at the bottom of the pan occurs, because the sticky stuff sinks down

I agree that evaporation of water is not the only factor that affects the ability of the oil to separate. This is evident from my previous suggestion about heating a dish in a microwave for several minutes. The oil separates even if the dish is covered (and, therefore, very little water evaporation is taking place).

Undoubtedly, there is quite a complex array of chemical and physical interactions going on!

Sorry to have high-jacked your BIR photo thread.....perhaps this is a topic for debate in another thread.....

[Natterjak]

I agree the proportions of water and oil must play a role, and thus evaporation has a part to play but my feeling is it's a secondary effect.

Oil rising is fairly widely taken to be an indicator of a dish being cooked so you're challenging conventional wisdom Cory. I still think conventional wisdom is valid. There is however certainly a lot going on in a curry pan which is outside the grasp of us laymen. Any of my crackpot theories to explain what's going on are mere speculation on my part based on observations and if I sound convinced of my own dubious theories maybe I overstate my case. Annoyingly I bet there's an authoritative, well researched explanation out there in the Internet of exactly why oil rises at a certain point when cooking curry but I may never find it.

Lastly yes we are probably a bit off topic for this particular section but that's the problem with forums I guess, too easy to get diverted off the original topic.

[jerrym]

sorry for asking the question - the water is now more muddy than before.

interesting thoughts by all. it sounds as if in simple terms less water means more oil.

the only thing i can add is that oil separating is not needed to confirm the dish is cooked. i look for the surface sort of cratering. at this point it's very difficult to continue to cook the curry at high heat and i can see why you would naturally turn down the heat as this point.

from what's said i think my oil must be burned off.

it sounds as if the BIR "low light" cooking is just for convenience of meeting orders / stopping escape from the pan and nothing to do with flavour.

as a further complication. New Season Onions.

on my last base i used new season onions and think i must never have used these before. the base turned out much thinner than normal (the thickening after 24hrs did not occur). as if the new season onion had far more water than normal onion. other than the thinness there was no obvious difference in the final curry ie no more or less oil than normal.

will have to watch the video

sorry for diverting the topic - oil in this day and age is very expensive and in the pic and knowing BIR chefs do very little that's not thought out made me question if i was missing a trick.

the trouble is i know very good restaurants that do have floating oil and equally some that don't and i suppose given the chemistry is unlikely to unfold both oil floating and not floating are both acceptable and as good a way forward as we need.

ps pic looks like a very nice curry

[goncalo]

I asked this question on seasoned advice and got sent over to this interesting post:
http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questi ... -it-happen

EDIT: Hah, only just noticed the author of the question is our very own spiceyokoko

[Natterjak]

Interesting link goncalo but I can't persuade myself to attribute any more credibility to the people who've answered that question that I would to anyone posting on any forum (including me!). In other words, who knows if they're right or not.

[goncalo]

Absolutely NJ, I just wanted to bring in a different perspective. I am interested in the technical aspects of why this happens as well.