The Cambridge Curry Community moderator Ollie has been kind enough to share his base gravy recipe for all you readers.

Indian restaurants frequently use base gravy to speed up the cooking process by creating a curry stock, which can be turned into any curry from the common ingredients shared by all curry types.

It’s a great thing to have laying around, so you can use any left over meat by turning it into a curry. Throw in some chicken, use the stock, and then add any extras which will then turn the stock into a Madras, vindaloo, or Jalfreizi sauce.

You’ll never have an excuse not to have a curry again!

Ingredients:

• Veg oil

• 100g cabbage

• 1 pepper (I’d have used green but I only had yellow)

• 1 carrot

• 700g onions

• 1L stock (ideally chicken, I only had beef, used 2x pots)

• 6 cloves garlic

• Thumb size piece of ginger

• 100g potato

• Tin chopped toms

• Half tube tom puree

• Half block of creamed coconut

Tbsp each:

• Sugar

• Garam masala

• Ground cumin

• Ground coriander

• Ground turmeric

• Mustard powder

“Chop all the veg up coarsely, chuck all of it plus the sugar and minus the potatoes in a large deep pan with the oil on medium heat, stir it about for 15 mins or so until it softens then add the stock and potatoes and simmer gently for an hour.

Add all the spices, tomato puree, tinned toms and coconut plus a load of water, bring back to boil and cook for another half hour. Blend with hand blender until smooth. Done.

Ready to portion up and freeze for use when needed with any “BIR curry base style” recipes.”

Don’t forget to check our recipe page for more recipes from our Cambridgeshire foodies!

Update: Ollie made butter chicken with this base and it looks utterly fantastic!

“I made this butter chicken using my base gravy.

The hours spent making a base gravy at the weekend and the chicken tikka I prepared the other night means I was able to knock up one of the best curries I’ve ever cooked in a little over half an hour on a week night.

I love the base gravy method!”

Butter chicken recipe here: