Alpacas are funny animals and v friendly. Taste good too. I have a few acres. 4 for grazing, a sty for pigs and my chooks are free range. So they get to shit wherever they want. Which isn't that great to be honest. I raise Wagyu Cattle. I've had Herefords, Red Devons and Dexters. Wagyu knocks the socks off anything in regard to taste and weight of meat on the bone. Mine don't get massages or beer. They get grass. I get the beer and I'm yet to convince SWMBO that a massage makes me more 'tender'.. 

It is a lot of work but it isn't 'work' at the same time. It's more a hobby. I'm a builder so I do sometimes struggle to put the hours into my block. But you do find friends are keen to help when they know I have great meat to trade 

Waaahahhaaaa.. Bitch fights on a forum?? That surprises me 

Really impressed with the base sauce. It was delicious, sweet and had a good depth of flavour. The precooked beef I done was a 'lamb' recipe but my chuck steak came out tender and full of flavour. It was chuck from my own cattle so it was v good to start with. Really looking at a few of my chooks now and trying to select a couple that 'need' to be CTM...

Thanks for the advice Sverige.

My first curry came out very good indeed - the wife said it was as good as the ones from the curry house. It was a very enjoyable day of making base sauce, spice mix and pre cooking meat. I have a list of spices and bits n bobs that I'll be getting this week.
Looking forward to making a CTM for the wife next.

New member here and this will be my first recipe from the site.. The pics look fabulous. Currently I don't have any lamb or chicken so I'm making it with my own Hereford x Red Devon beef.
I have made my base sauce, pre cooked my beef and made my mix powder. V excited to see what this comes out like.

Very recently I discovered the genius that is Sixto Rodriguez.. Actually his album Cold Fact has just finished and ABBA has just come on the music player, Mama Mia here we go again  ;D

There won't be a reason for me NOT to post... You guys might find a reason to stop me posting my jibber though 

Great intro 

I have travelled to most of the places you mention and like you found the food in Asia to be stunning, varied and at times ridiculously cheap. Finally discovered NZ 12 years ago and realised that aside from a couple of annoyances this place should be my home. Those annoyances were no decent Indian food within a couple hours travel and no English Ale. Those two annoyances have mostly gone now with the explosion of craft brewing here in the last 6 years and with quite a lot of POMs now emigrating here there are a few really good curry houses.

Hi there
Firstly I'd like to say what a great site this is. Been nosing about on the internet for a base gravy and found this place..
Moved over to NZ from London ten years ago. The hunt for a 'real' curry started and ended quickly here in NZ. On the whole Kiwis don't do hot food. So I tried every curry house I came across and was hugely disappointed with all of them. Over here curries are mild, medium or hot. Even a korma or a vindaloo.. I asked ALL the curry houses why they don't make hot curries and was told the Kiwi palate can't deal with it so they don't make hot curries or even spicy curries. So I had to cope with making my own and then ran into the next stumbling block. I live in Northland. No Indian grocers here ten years ago. We now have two very good ones - still can't get Bombay Duck though Just recently we had a new curry house open here. I had gone from eating curries 3 times a week to 3 times a year and my tolerance of heat had gone. However a week ago I was on the way home and was stuck in traffic - I had stopped for more than 3 secs - that's a traffic jam here  right next to the new curry house. So I pulled over and ordered a Madras for me, CTM for the wife and some poppadoms and couple of naan. Fanbloodytastic!! At last! I then stopped in on my way home for the following 4 nights. trying most of what they had on offer. However this is way too expensive for me to maintain. Especially coupled with my passion for a few 'refreshing beverages'. So I decided I needed to cook them myself. I'm a pretty good cook - made it onto Masterchef NZ this year. So I know my way around a kitchen.
Really looking forward to having a go at some of the recipes here - especially a good CTM for SWMBO and for me Madras, Rogan Josh etc etc

Right now I'm making the 'new base sauce' recipe on here.

I look forward to chatting with you and joining in.

Cheers
MEB aka Martin