Could someone give a rough estimate for the "some water" part of the recipe - how much water is added to this base? 

The only liquids I can see are the tin of toms and 1/2 cup of oil - yet people seem to be getting 5x250ml portions out of it! What am I missing?

something on this thread is popping up a login box for
www.in2curry.co.uk

Any ideas on creating a restaurant/takeway Saag - my locals is hot, very dark, stodgy thick (almost black), yet with sublte flavours and some creaminess/nutiness perhaps!

Even to start - do most takeaways use fresh/frozen or canned spinach?  Anyone else a saag addict?

There seems to be a common theme in many threads here -

"My friends/partner/lover/guests liked/loved it but I wasn't that impressed"

Explanations -

As above - by being involved in the cooking somehow our sense of smell (directly linked to our sense of taste) is somehow different. 

There have been a number of experiments that show that taste is dramatically influenced by our expectation - exactly the same pre-prepared meal 'tastes' different depending on where it is served.

Also lots of food tastes different just because you don't cook it yourself.  As an extreme example toast I make for myself never is as good as toast made for me!

So could it all be in our mind - has anyone tried serving a home-made BIR-style curry alongside a takeaway and have the 2 compared by guests who don't know which is which?

Another explanation may be that the people posting here are by definition the curry-geeks and our expectations are much higher than our partners who just happen to like a curry but certainly wouldn't spend an entire saturday trying to make one!

It's as we feared, once someone boasts they know the Holy Grail of BIR cooking, the Indian Restaurant Opus Dei send an albino monk and he's never heard of again.

We probably need a 'Curry code'

Quote from: George on May 19, 2006, 10:07 AM
I agree with you. The good BIRs are becoming increasingly hard to find. Most places dish up stuff which isn't half as good as supermarket (chilled food) curries, in my opinion, but at about twice the price.

I haven't had anything from a supermarket that could even be mistaken for a bad take-away curry!  What fresh supermarket curries do you think are as good/better than an Indian  restaurant's ?

I've made a korma based on the recipes here for the last 2 weekends and I'm extremely satisfied with the results.

1 TBLS veg oil
1 ladle (soup!) of a curry gravy (mildish one)
1/2 a 410g can of evaporated milk
small chunk of creamed cocounut
2-3 heaped desertspoons of ground almonds
1+ TBLS caster sugar
pinch (1/4 - 1/2) tsp of Kriss Dillons Garam masalla.

Basically it's about 50/50 base sauce and evaporated milk - I've been using about 1 ladle of gravy and about 1/2 can of evaporated milk.

It should do 2 chicken breasts (like a take-away lots of sauce-little meat) or use 3 if you like a higher meat-sauce ratio.

Taste the final mix after 1 tablespoon of sugar and add more until it's *your* perfect flavour, some take-away kormas I find too sickly but the great thing about cooking it at home is you get it exactly the way you like it!

Is this the "pete's 600ml oil gravy" that's recomended in other posts or is that another one?  If so any chance of a link please?