Curry Recipes Online
Beginners Guide => Just Joined? Introduce Yourself => Topic started by: Darkginger on April 17, 2012, 05:06 PM
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Hiya - some of you may know me from a certain other curry site - but this one seems to be more active, and has a wealth of info on it - so here I am!
I'm passionate about curries and Indian/Bangladeshi/Pakistani food - been eating the restaurant versions since the late 70s, and trying to cook them since the 80s, with varying degrees of success. The past couple of years I've got closer than ever - mainly thanks to the other site and a couple of e-books - the latest being Julian's of course :) I've been through the Pat Chapman and Kris Dhillon book stages - but never really got anywhere close with them!
I'm a Brit living in the far west of Ireland, where there are few decent curry houses - the best being 30 miles from us, so we don't get there very often. I still have relatives back in the UK (Brighton) so indulge myself currywise whenever I get back there - both for instant satisfaction (ooer!) and as a kind of quality control on
my own cooking - I find it tends to drift if I don't refer back to that restaurant taste from time to time.
Anyway, here I am, with 10 litres of Julian's C2G base in the freezer and a yearning to put it to good use. Looking forward to getting to know you :)
Jo
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Hi Jo,
Welcome to cr0. I know what you mean, you have to get on out there and taste some really good BIR food every so often or you can forget what you were aiming at in the first place.
Cheers,
Paul
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Hi Jo & welcome :)
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Jo welcome
I am also a member of the other site and I agree it's not at active as this one which is why I probably won't renew my membership.
This is a good site and there's a lot of knowledge being shared amongst forum members so I hope you get good results with your 10 litres of base - that's a nice batch of curries in the making!
Steve
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Hi Jo, welcome to cr0, I have 0 litres of base at the moment:(, let us know what the 10l ends up as
Regards
ELW
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Hi Darkginger (Jo)
Welcome - can you pretty much get hold of the ingredients for curries where you are?
Were you active on the other certain curry site?
best, Rich
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Yeah, I seem to have been active enough on the other site (recently, anyway) to have earned a medal - go me! lol!
Nope, getting ingredients here is like finding hens' teeth - so the internet is my friend, plus I get back to Brighton 3 times a year - where there is the magnificent Asian supermarket known as 'Taj'. I pick up big bags of spices there - yer basic coriander, cumin etc. - travel over with a half empty bag because I know I'll be coming back with what looks suspiciously like bags of drugs to an x-ray machine - though have yet to be stopped and searched! Last time I escaped from the UK with the last known supplies (400g of it) of Bombay Duck - very stinky!
Our local health food shop does stuff like gram flour and pulses - also methi, strangely enough - the greengrocers always have a selection of chillies, garlic and ginger - so fresh and dried veg aren't a problem - just spices. I do resort to the overpriced Schwartz stuff if desperate. It's all a bit of a challenge, but overcoming the difficulties make success so much sweeter!
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Welcome to Cr0 Darkginger. I get all my stuff exported to Tasmania by my long suffering sister. The last lot was 10 jars of Mr Naga. :)
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Welcome Darkginger .. I know first hand your problems in obtaining spices and so on , I'm in Slovakia and resort to trips back to UK too .. in fact I returned last Saturday from my latest trip with around 3kg of different spice plus 1kg of fresh coriander .. I also bought some seeds from the garden center so I can try to grow some coriander later in the year. It does add to the fun and makes my curry extra special knowing the effort that went into the ingredient sourcing !! :)
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Last time I escaped from the UK with the last known supplies (400g of it) of Bombay Duck - very stinky!
Now there is a blast from the past. My favourite starter along with poppadums and pickle. Unfortunately, the stuff now available (pretty rare though) is nothing like the stuff from years ago before we signed up to toe the Euro line, more's the pity. I can still visualise and taste that unique smell and salty flavour. Nothing quite replaces that :'(
Having spent a lot of time in the West of Ireland and having attempted to cook restaurant style curries there, i can appreciate the difficulties. I ended up taking back everything i needed. Things don't seem to have improved much with time either.
Where abouts are you exactly Jo? My time was spent in Connemara west of Galway City right down on the shores of the atlantic.
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We're in Mayo - near Westport, right on the coast, as you were. Tandoori mackerel, anyone? Maybe a winkle bhaji? The nearest town with a Lidl and Aldi is Castlebar, though we do have a Lidl in Westport now - and a Tesco, but I don't shop in there much. Lucky enough to have a really good fishmongers, several butchers and a great greengrocers so fresh ingredients are easy.
This Bombay Duck seems really good to me - deep fried and sprinkled over the top of a curry (which is how I like to eat it) it's wonderful :) The Ashoka in Hove, East Sussex still offers it on the menu, but it's the hardest thing to find for sale... Bristol Sweet Mart had some, but they told me I bought the last of it - they may of course have restocked by now. I have almost 400g of it - and that's a LOT of dried fish!
Galway's my favourite Irish city, though I've not been there for a while, and that was on a hen night...'nuff said!
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Been through Westport a few times when taking the scenic route back to Knock airport. Total contrast to Connemara landscape. Plenty of fresh produce over there, particularly seafood but you don't half pay for it, and that pretty much goes for everything. I can remember paying 4 punts just for a very large cabbage :o :o pre the bloody euro. Loads of lobster, crab, scallops winkles where i used to go down in the Galtach area famous for the hooker racing. Very happy memories. As the brother in law was a fisherman i basically ordered what i wanted and if available, it would appear for tea :P 8)
As for bombay duck. I so loved the stuff of years ago. Have tried the stuff now available, when you can find it as you say. It has the taste but even when deep fried it is chewy and doesn't snap, crumble and just melt in your mouth like it used to. Bloody Eurobureaucrats >:( >:(