Indian curry base gravy – hotel style

Ingredients

• Vegetable oil

  Natreon canola, high stability, non trans, high oleic (70%)

  190g

• Onions

  Sweet, raw

  1.35kg

• Tomatoes

  Crushed, canned

  800g

• Cardamom Pod

  Whole, raw - Whole Foods Market

  5 pod or 1g

• Peppercorn

  Whole peppercorns, black

  10 dash or 1g

• Whole Cloves

  Morton & Bassett Spices

  3g

• Bay leaf

  Spices

  1g

• Cinnamon Sticks

  Canela - Don Enrique

  1 piece or 6g

• Turmeric

  Spices, ground

  2 tsp or 4g

• Chili powder

  Spices

  1 tbsp or 8g

• Cumin

  Spices, cumin seed

  1 tbsp, ground or 9g

• Coriander seed

  Spices

  2 tbsp or 10g

• Salt

  Table

  2 tsp or 12g

• Fresh cilantro

  Coriander leaves, raw

  2 cup or 32g

• Water

  Plain, clean water

  237g

• Garlic Ginger Paste

  https://glebekitchen.com/garlic-ginger-paste/

  60g

Directions

1. You need a lot of chopped onions for this. Do yourself a favour and use a food processor if you have one. Peel and half the onions. Cut each half into six pieces. Fill your food processor about 2/3 full and pulse around 5-8 times. You should have diced onions. Repeat until you have chopped all the onions.
2. As long as your food processor is out use it to chop the tomatoes (if using fresh). Easy.
3. Heat the oil in a pot large enough to hold all the ingredients.
4. Add the oil and heat over medium heat.
5. Once the oil starts to shimmer add the cardamom, black peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon and optional Indian bay leaf.
6. Let the spices bubble for about 20 seconds and then add the onions.
7. This takes some time and attention. Cook the onions over medium heat. Stir every minute of so. You want them brown. Nice and brown. Not tan. Brown. Think French onion soup. This is going to take you around 30-40 minutes and maybe more. But you are doing it once. For 8 restaurant portions of curry. So it's under 5 minutes a curry. Totally worth it.
8. While the onions cook do the rest of your prep. Make sure the tomatoes are chopped. Cut your green chilies in half and seed them (use a spoon).
9. Add the turmeric, cumin, coriander and kashmiri chili powder in a bowl. Add about a 1/2 cup of water and stir to make a slurry. You may need to add a bit more water. Doesn't matter.
10. Once the onions are this nice creamy brown mess add the garlic ginger paste. Stir to combine and continue to cook for about two minutes.
11. Add the powdered spice slurry and the salt. Cook another 3 minutes.
12. Add the chopped tomatoes, green chilies and cilantro. Simmer until the tomatoes are broken down. This takes about 10 minutes. The oil may have separated at this point. If it did, do NOT remove it. It's pure flavour.
13. Add a cup of water. Let it cool a bit. Puree the hotel style curry gravy, whole spices and all. Yes. Whole spices get pureed. Use a blender. If it's too thick to puree add a bit more water. Make sure you vent your blender. Steam needs to escape or you'll be off to the hospital burn unit. Not good. Safety first.
14. You should now have about 8 cups of magic curry gravy to use in all sorts of curries.