Hi Derek,

I find adding tom juice to the curry at the start adds the tomato flavour I like, adding more puree doesn't work.  I use this in a madras and a vindaloo.

Curry King thanks for the pictures they do look the business. At the Ashoka the chef opened a catering can of tomatoes and used the sauce/juice inside in one of the dishes. Cheers Panpot

CK - juice or pasatta?

A nice bit of oil there CK

on the topic of a standard bir madras. my experience of madras from quite a few takeaways around the country, have been very similar. They have all tasted lightly spiced, with plenty of the 'taste', tomatoey, slightly sour + sweet, garnished with coriander, and very very very moorish. I do find the bhuna and rogan josh vary a lot between bir's. 

I always use either tinned tom juice or the 'blitzed' contents of tinned toms ( a tin of plum tomartos blended with their own juice).  

Firstly I fry  a chopped chilie "Bruce Edwards'" style,  add a small ladle of base to help prevent the spices burning, add the spices and fry this right down, and repeat with another ladle of base.  The process seems to caramelize the sugars in the the pureed onion within the base, and consequently adds to the flavour; as well as cooking the spices to 'toffee' without burning.  The the chopped chicken goes in, I don't pre-cook chicken 'cos it only takes 10 minutes to cook.

Next I add the rest of the base in stages, allowing each addition to come up to the boil, TOGETHER with the tinned tom juice a a quarter tps of worchester sauce (no more than that, that's important!), total base volume is 450ml at start.

I tried pretty much everything in my currys to get the right sourness: vinegar (wine, rice, malt, cider), lemon juice, lime juice, tamarind paste.  Nothing worked really well until I tried tomarto juice.  I got the idea from Camella Punjabies book (traditiona Indian stuff), in which she stated that tomarto can be used for souring as well as sweetening.  I use tom puree for sweetening (bhunas stc).

I was was quite pleased to note that C.K., who writes a lot of good sense stuff here, had found the same thing, although his technique is slightly different.

I am REALLY happy with my madras now, have have moved on to trying to get other dishes right!

I wrote the method I use in the C.K.s madras thread somewhere asI recall, I hope he didn't mind, I wasn't trying to steal his thunder so much as reinforce what he said.  But in any one is interested my  spice mix for madras is:-

-4 lev tps Bruce Edwards' spice mix (with paprika), using Rajah mild madras as the curry powder (the hot madras is not necessary as chillie goes in as well, and anyway it tastes to strongly of bayleaf.
-2lev tps Rajah extra hot chilie powder
-1/2 lev tps (or just less than that) salt
-1 lev tps (or a tad less) brown sugar
-1/4 lev tps of GROUND dried methi leaf.

I use either passata or tin tom juice both work quite well I find. I think I discovered it by accident, ran out of tom puree and had to improvise and found it worked really well.

Sorry the toal amount of tinned tom juice I use 3or4  tbs ( the big old fashioned table spoons), so that's proabably slighty more than 3 or 4 lots of 15ml!

there's so much in this post - i can't believe it.

CK me too - i love the lashing's of fresh coriander - i actually add it after the base has gone in ie not as a garnish.

in terms of tom juice or passata - i feel the passata would be best but have not tried the juice (only tried passata). it really did put the last piece of jigsaw in for me.

Adrian - i too feel there is significance in frying off some of the base. i actually use water with the spices and tom puree and fry off and then add 1/2 ladle of base and fry off again.

are u reducing the 450ml original base down to 200ml - i've been toying with how much "thinness" is needed and originally used 300 to 200ml then went to 400 to 200 and have gone back to 300 to 200ml.

DD - i can't believe it but i've recently taken all tomato out of the base. i feel irrespective of whether u put it in the base or not both tom puree and passata to be vital to achieving madras.

I tried a Madras tonight, usual recipe with the following changes:

- Used Ashoka's garlic/ginger/turmeric pre-mix
- Used 3 tbsp passata once the g/g paste was frying
- Added a tsp of Ashoka's green chilli paste after the base was added
- No methi
- No lemon juice

Very different to my usual! I relented at the end and crumbled some methi in. Removing the lemon juice changes the curry pretty significantly. The green chilli adds a real extra "bite" without adding searing heat throughout. Could be why some have noticed their BIR Madras to be hotter than what they make at home. Different sort of heat to raw red chilli powder.

I thought it was very nice and might restrain myself from the methi as an experiment next time round.

Looking forward to CK posting the recipe for "that" Madras though...

-- Josh