My partner hails from Birmingham (UK, not Alabama) the curry centre of Britain and she had her favourite restaurants. Now, when I was getting to know her I said that I made a decent curry, and that's all I said leaving her thinking it would be a jar of Pataks or similar. So when I made her one for the first time, from a base I'd prepared days before, I wouldn't let her in the kitchen to see  what I was doing.

Anyway the inevitable "that smells good" could be heard as I carried on in the kitchen and when I served it up her first words were "it looks like it came from a restaurant". Then, after she'd finished mopping up her plate she swore it was as good as any restaurant/take away she'd visited in Birmingham. Now, in no way shape or form is she a fan of cooking, however, both she and one of her sons are cranking out BIR curries on a weekly basis.

Furthermore I got her to bring a curry from her favourite restaurant for a side by side taste test when she once came to stay, and to be honest guys, I couldn't say one was better than the other. Both had a slightly different taste, but there was no stand out winner.

Well done SP.  I am afraid that my memories of trying to cook a genuine BIR curry for my girl-friend (then resident in Smethwick, but we had eaten in BIRs in Birmingham many times) are nowhere near as satisfying or a good as yours.  Suffice to say I had no idea how to cook a BIR-style curry, tried winging it, but the results were a complete and utter disaster.  Not unlike my efforts at cooking the same girl-friend Greek kleftiko.  But at least I managed to impress the proprietor of a Bengali-speaking shop owner when trying to buy lentils — he had no idea what "lentils" were, I had no idea what lentils were called in Bengali, but somehow I managed to drag up "dal" from somewhere, he suddenly had a great big beaming smile on his face, and all of a sudden there were more varieties of lentils than I even knew existed all over the floor of his shop for me to indicate the ones that I wanted !

I also got my brother cooking BIR curries using the base and spice mix from the book "100 Best Balti Curries". It got to the stage where he was cooking them so often that when his teenage kids asked "what's for tea dad" and he replied "curry" their reply was "oh no, not again dad". Funny,

Quote from: stevepaul on August 24, 2022, 09:15 PM
I also got my brother cooking BIR curries using the base and spice mix from the book "100 Best Balti Curries". It got to the stage where he was cooking them so often that when his teenage kids asked "what's for tea dad" and he replied "curry" their reply was "oh no, not again dad". Funny,

I can relate to that.  I've eaten curry for about 8 dinners over of the last 2 weeks.  Wifey has eaten it a few times and the kids (young adults) zip.  I need to cook them different meals every night.  My wife teaches support needs education and one of her students, who exhibits special attention to details, has been telling her that she smells like curry.  I think it's the fresh Kasuri Methi.