Hi TC,

Stick it back on the heat, bring to a simmer and stir in some boiled water until it's thinned out a bit.  You can then just leave it simmering until the oil rises, keep stirring and checking to make sure it doesn't thicken up to much.

cK

Never seen a base sauce brown in colour before.   The restaurant kitchen I went into, the base sauce was orange and more often than not when been mentioned on this forum has been an orangey colour too. Wish Pete was about, he would confirm this as he has been into more bir kitchens for demo's than all of us.  With regard to the thickness or not of the base it should be quite runny.  If you have a thick base and start adding spices to it when making a curry it will thicken too much and you would have to let it down then with either water or stock.  CQ

Here's a photo after I had got to work with a stick blender, it's much more like a thin gravy now.
Added ? pint chicken stock and simmered for a further 45 minutes, the oil certainly has come to the top now.
Made the Madras recope as given and apart from being a tad dry it tasted brilliant, the best I've ever made.
Thanks guys.
TC

So I made four curries with some of this base last night (two each for me and my girlfriend, one each for last night, one each for tonight). They were fantastic, as usual (!)  I'm always trying different recipes, so can't really comment on what I thought of the base versus other bases because I have no benchmark curry really, but I did like the fact that the base was smaller, and pretty simple to make, so will no doubt use this base recipe again.

Next time I make this base I will:

? Have a better idea of what consistency I'm aiming for (ended up adding more water last night and it 'seemed' right). Might experiment with adding stock instead of water, although I can't use chicken stock as my girlfriend is a vegetarian.

? Experiment with longer simmering (I let it simmer a while more before I used it last night, but would be interesting giving it a few hours).

? Blend in two batches, as I think the whole thing was a bit much for my blender to do a good job on, even though it fitted in the jug (re-blended it before use last night as it wasn't quite smooth enough, I thought).

R.

Heres the lamb bhuna I made with this base.

This has to be one of the best currys I have made it had more of a natural sweetness than my usual base which worked a treat for this, not so well in the madras I made so next time I will add a little lemon juice.

Great base that I will be using again and will try tweaking it a little.