The Base of a Curry.
"Cook until the oil separates" is the most important line in an Indian recipe. It means: until most of the water in the onions and tomatoes has boiled away.
A base of onions, ginger, garlic and tomatoes holds the water of fresh vegetables: half a kilo of onion and tomato is roughly 450 g of water. The first stage fries sliced or chopped onions in plenty of oil until golden or deep brown, which takes 15–25 minutes — browning cannot begin until the water at their surface has gone (VIII.2, VIII.5). Ginger-garlic paste goes in for a minute until it smells cooked; then tomatoes and ground spices — turmeric, coriander, cumin, chilli. Now the bhuna: frying and stirring the masala as its water evaporates, scraping the bottom, adding a splash of water if it catches.
As water leaves, the masala thickens to a paste, the spices fry in the remaining oil (XXIX.2), sugars caramelise and the raw edge of the tomato and garlic disappears. When there is too little water left to hold the oil in emulsion, the oil separates and pools at the edges, glistening red with the spices' colour. That is the signal that the base is cooked; only then go in the meat, vegetables or pulses, and the water or stock for the gravy. Rushing it on high heat burns the bottom before the water is gone; on very low heat it takes an hour. The workshop cooks a masala down.
Below: the water left in a masala of 300 g onion, 200 g tomato, ginger, garlic and 60 g oil as it is cooked at the fire you choose for the minutes you choose (teaching evaporation rate in proportion to the burner's delivered power), with the point at which the oil separates.
- Cook onions to the right colour.
- Bhuna a masala until the oil separates.
- Control heat while cooking down.
- Know when to add the main ingredient.
Cook out the water, then build
At medium fire the model drives off about 10 g of water a minute, so the oil separates after about 35 minutes; at full fire after 18, but with the paste likely to catch and burn in the last minutes; at a gentle quarter, 70. Cooks get the best of both: high heat while the masala is wet, medium as it thickens, low and a splash of water whenever it sticks. The time is not wasted — it is where caramelised onion, fried spice and concentrated tomato come from.
A base for 4 (for chicken, chickpeas or paneer): heat 60 g oil or ghee, add 1 tsp cumin seeds and a bay leaf; add 300 g finely chopped onions with a pinch of salt and fry over medium-high heat, stirring, 15–20 minutes to deep golden. Add 1 tbsp each grated ginger and garlic, fry 1 minute. Add 1 tsp turmeric, 2 tsp ground coriander, 1 tsp ground cumin and 1 tsp chilli powder with a splash of water, fry 1 minute; add 200 g chopped tomatoes and cook down, stirring and scraping, about 10–15 minutes until the masala is thick and the oil glistens at the edges. Now add the main ingredient, stir to coat, add water or stock, and simmer; finish with garam masala (XXIX.3) and coriander leaves.
Cook the same masala twice, stopping once when it looks thick and once when the oil clearly separates. Simmer each with the same chickpeas and taste them side by side.
Terms
- Bhuna
- Frying a masala as its water evaporates until the oil separates.
- Oil separates
- The sign that a masala base is cooked.
- Ginger-garlic paste
- Pounded ginger and garlic, fried briefly after the onions.
- Masala base
- Onion, ginger, garlic, tomato and spice cooked down.
Sources
- USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy (April 2018), public domain.
- K. T. Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion, Oxford University Press, 1994; and A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food, 1998.
- A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.