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- Right now, many of our favourite restaurants
are either closed or only offering takeaway,
the best thing that we can do to support
our local restaurants is to treat ourselves when we can.
We asked you on Instagram,
"What food and takeaways lift your lockdown spirits?"
So today we're gonna try and pay homage
to the "Classic Curry".
I've got Baz here, I've got a butter chicken,
I've got a chicken tikka masala from our local takeaway.
And I'm gonna try my best to recreate them
and add my own spin on it.
Let's see just how close we can get.
- Hi mate.
- Hello dude, how are you?
- I'm actually really excited for this,
cause I think tikka masala and butter chicken
are two of my favourite curries.
- Should we go on with it?
- Yes.
- Right, butter chicken.
- It's painful to watch a chef dissect a recipe
and tell you how delicious it is.
- Okay, I'm tasting the tikka masala, red.
- Yeah. - That's the first thing
that I noticed, it's really, really red.
I don't know why they're using breast
instead of like thigh or something.
I'll just have Naan bread as well,
I don't think we'll recreate Naan bread,
but I'll eat it anyway.
- How long is this video going to take your make?
- Mate, it'll take as long as it takes, okay?
So the butter chicken is obviously buttery,
but it's also really light and really mild,
it's very nutty, it's obviously got something
like blitzed through it.
The chicken is slightly smaller chunks as well,
it feels like it's been cooked in the sauce
rather than grilled or something.
Whereas the tikka masala, the chicken obviously is grilled,
it's got skewer marks through it.
A lot redder, slightly more heat to it,
but also very, very sweet.
And then the rice, caraway seeds, big flavour
but the main thing I'm worried about is the fact
that all those grains are really individual,
so you obviously need to get the ratio perfect.
- How many ingredients do you think
we need to replicate these recipes?
- I have a lot of ingredients that you can't see.
First thing to do, onions.
- How many onions are you talking?
- I'm gonna do six.
- How many people are you feeding?
- We're trying to recreate curry that people make
in a restaurant or a takeaway, aren't we?
I've read what happens, they create a base,
like a base sauce that you then add different spices to,
to create different curries.
Because a lot of the time they'll have
a lot of curries on the menu.
So that's what we're gonna do, we're gonna make
a big base and then split it between two curries.
Mike lent me a book, it's called "The Curry Secret".
- [Barry] Okay.
- It's from like 1989 or something.
What it says to do is to chop the onion,
garlic and ginger and blitz it.
I like the idea of cooking the onions first,
basically making the whole thing and then blending it.
Man, I'm crying hard right now.
If you're making a base, it's the kind of thing
that you can just stick on and leave over a low heat
for 45 minutes to an hour while the onions cook out.
The one thing that this book does say is
it is essential that the sauce is smooth.
Right now I'm just chopping up garlic and ginger.
50 grammes of each, which is...
which is quite a lot.
Cooking out for another five minutes or so,
and then I'm gonna add the water, simmer it
for 40 minutes while I make the other stuff.
So in the meantime, I'm gonna make chicken tikka,
which is a marinade.
So we're gonna marinade chicken,
it's says chicken fillets here.
I'm going for thigh fillets.
So it's plain yoghourt, chilli powder, salt, oil.
It says food colouring, a pinch of yellow food colouring
is about a teaspoon of turmeric.
Obviously it's gonna add a little bit of flavour to it,
but it shouldn't...
it shouldn't effect it in any way compared to this recipe.
So this is what's gonna like really char under the grill.
- No, no.
See that's where you're a chef and I'm...
I would never put my hands in turmeric.
- Right, that can just sit.
Now the butter chicken, I'm not gonna marinate the chicken.
- Oh! - I'm gonna cut it up,
and I'm just gonna poach it in the sauce to finish it.
- Okay. - So it's gonna be
a completely different type of recipe
to the chicken tikka masala, which is gonna be grilled.
Okay, so I'm gonna go coriander seeds,
garam masala, cardamom, pods, cinnamon stick,
chilli powder, cloves.
I'm gonna blend all that together
into a butter chicken spice blend.
I put the whole spices in first
cause the powders toast very, very quickly.
I'm gonna go blitz those up.
Oh, mate-- - I wanna get
my nose in there.
- It might even smell like what the real one tasted like.
But what I need in addition to that is this, cashew nuts.
Definitely a nutty something in there.
And I don't know, it didn't...
it didn't have like a super strong flavour
and it kind of...
it kind of reminded me of cashews.
So I'm going for it.
I'm gonna soak my cashew nuts.
I'm gonna leave them to the side
with my other prepared ingredients.
Shall we have a look at our onions?
- Yeah. - It does actually
have a way to prepare the chicken, which uses the base.
Oh, do I do it?
- Yes, of course you do it.
We're here, we're making a video about it.
Of course you do it right.
- Right, in that case, we're gonna blitz this as it is
and then pour it into another pan, reserve some
of the base, which we're then gonna mix
with oil and turmeric.
- Any leftover base you've got, freeze it up
and send it my way.
- I might take it home.
And then I added 10 of chopped tomatoes to it.
Butter chicken, chicken.
I'm just gonna cut it into slightly smaller pieces
like I did with the first chicken.
And then I'm gonna pour a little bit of this sauce over it.
That's looking good.
So I'm gonna leave that to marinate until I need it.
I've got to add a load of oil to the pan
and I've gotta fry off tomato purée, turmeric and paprika,
and then add this and then simmer it.
So it's gonna intensify in flavour.
I'd give that 20 to 25 minutes.
- (mumbles) guess what I've just done?
- Are you ordering curries again?
- Nailed it.
- Okay, (mumbles) rice.
So I'm going to add a little bit of oil to the pan.
I'm gonna add the caraway seeds, fry them off.
So toast them like I did for the others.
Then I'm gonna add the rice toast that off a little bit,
just to kind of give it a little bit of extra flavour.
And then what I'll do is add the right amount of water,
so I'm gonna do 300 grammes of rice to 500ml of water,
add a lid and just simmer over a super super low heat.
(upbeat music)
I think we've got the right texture,
it is just those soaked cashews with a little bit
of water and it's looking good.
It's like, it's smooth-ish, but it's got
that feel that I definitely tasted.
- What's your go-to order mate?
- It's always a Lamb Sag.
- Is it? - I don't know,
I just love the spices, I love they're slightly fresher,
I don't know.
Now, I'm gonna grill our chicken.
- Right, this is the bit that no matter what you do at home,
you can't recreate it to what they do in the restaurant
cause you haven't got
a Tandoor oven. - You can't, you cant do that.
But what I can do is get a little bit of charring on it,
and all I'm gonna do is line a tray
and chuck the chicken on it.
- I think I just heard the door (mumbles).
Hayley, is that what I think is?
- It is.
- Yes, it's here.
- Barry has gone to get his takeaway curry.
I'm really upset because I was hoping
he'd be really jealous.
- Look at my chicken masala.
- That's really red.
- How much rice am I gonna have?
This much rice.
- My chicken is looking pretty good,
it's a little bit charred.
It's not charred enough, so I'm gonna keep going.
I'm just turning it.
This is where skewers would come in handy, but hey.
- Very rarely I get to eat before James finish cooking.
- Barry doesn't care, but I'm now gonna split
my base into two separate pans and add my spice mixtures.
- I do--
I do care.
- Okay, he wants me to add four tablespoons of oil to a pan,
which I will do, three cups of curry sauce.
So I'm gonna bring this up to a boil.
Now I need to do my other one, add the same amount
of curry sauce to it and bring it to a boil.
I'm also gonna add my cashews to it now.
Okay, the tikka masala is up to a boil,
so we're gonna go paprika, salt, chilli powder
and food colouring.
Okay, can you see that?
- Wow, that is nothing like what I'm eating.
- Okay, this is looking pretty good.
Okay, let's move on to the other one.
So this is my butter chicken,
what we need to do is cook my chicken in it,
which is probably gonna thin out a little bit.
- Where's the rice?
- So I just kind of left that to steam,
I took it off the heat after 15 minutes
and left it with the lid on.
The recipe that I was looking at said
"Put little cubes of butter on it
and just let them melt in."
So I might do that, I've got ghee,
so I'm gonna use ghee.
- Smashed it.
- I had to watch Mike eat a hundred layer lasagna
that we spent nine hours making together
and you couldn't watch me make curries
for two hours without getting one.
This is my butter chicken spice blend,
it's going into the butter chicken.
I'm not sure how much to put in,
so I'm gonna go with about a tablespoon.
These both look excellent.
Okay, so the tikka masala, I'm gonna go in
with garam masala and cumin powder.
I'm also gonna put all the chicken juices in,
it doesn't say it anywhere, but.
Six tablespoons of cream into the tikka,
and I probably do about the same plus two tablespoons
of butter or ghee into the butter chicken.
And then I'm done, I'm gonna add...
I'm gonna add some coriander.
- [Barry] Is that the tikka masala?
- [James] Yeah.
- That is a long way off the colour.
- I don't know, I don't wanna add anything more....
Oh, I'm gonna do it.
This could ruin it, this could absolutely ruin it.
Oh, oh!
- Too far?
- That might be perfect.
- It's not the same as of what I just had
but it's pretty damn good.
- Okay, I'm tasting the tikka masala.
It feels a little bit late to me to add chilli
because it will be kind of a bit raw,
but I do want that extra kick,
so I'm just gonna add a little bit.
Oh man, - And that is
the sound of a happy man.
Is it time to serve up now?
- I think it is, yeah.
- Okay, J, let's do this.
They look great.
(orchestral music)
All right, let's just taste some.
- I'm for the butter chicken first,
I've already noticed something which really annoys me.
There's fennel seeds in the rice of the takeaway,
oh, that would have been an easy win, wouldn't it?
Already my butter chicken is a lot runnier,
it could have been a little bit thicker.
Like the tikka masala is, I would say perfect consistency.
- Eat it.
- That is like what I remember, this is a lot more buttery.
- Is that what you want though?
- Mm-hmm. - [Barry] Okay.
- It's a lot less sweet, so maybe it could have done
with a little bit of sugar, but I prefer mine.
So this is the chicken tikka masala,
and my chicken seems a lot more charred.
This is redder, this is kind of darker.
- [Barry] Yeah. - It looks...
it looks more real.
So let me taste it, this one is chicken breast.
In terms of the two takeaway dishes,
I much prefer the tikka masala,
which I didn't expect cause I like the butter chicken
but this has just got a little bit more spice to it,
it's a little bit more rounded.
If we're looking on the basis of, are they the same dish?
Like have I nailed the brief and delivered a similar dish?
I failed miserably.
- Wow. - They are so different.
Mine has a much more charred flavour running through it,
they both probably have a similar level of spice.
The takeaway version is way sweeter,
like it's got a bunch of sugar in it.
- Do you think with your butter chicken,
do you think you passed?
- I don't think it tastes that much
like the takeaway butter chicken,
but I'm gonna give myself a pass cause it tastes delicious.
- I can see where this is going.
And you're tikka masala?
- Tikka masala, I will give myself a fail.
Because I...
I think it's delicious,
but it tastes quite far from this one.
- Interesting.
- And it's not...
It's not giving me the kind of thing
that I was really looking forward to.
Like it's got the charr and that's great,
but it just needs a little more depth.
I'll usually cook a curry by just throwing stuff together,
like midweek, and to take the time to actually like,
think about how to make it and try and recreate something
that comes from a restaurant or a takeaway,
I feel really proud.
So yeah, I think people should definitely try it.
It does take a long time, but I do...
I do have about six portions of curry base left,
so I wouldn't have to go through that again.
- Enjoy your dinner, you've got a lot of it.
- Thanks, dude.
- Okay, so it's over to you guys,
how do you think James did, was it a pass or a fail?
Also any curry experts out there, let us know,
is there anything we could have done to make that perfect.
Also, if you enjoyed watching James go through this,
then make sure you like this video,
otherwise stay safe and we'll see you in a few days.
- We've also built the "Sorted Club",
where you can get tonnes of foodie inspo
using the "Packs" midweek meal app, discover
and share restaurant recommendations using the "Eat App",
listen and contribute to our "Feast Your Ears" podcast,
and send us ideas for new cookbooks you receive
throughout the year.
Check it all out by heading to sorted.club
And now a blooper.
That was the seat, not me.