Hail fellow curry lovers,
After spending a while as a passive observer of this forum, and sharing in the joy of curry and the missery of the "close but no cigar" home curry cooking experience, I had a stroke of luck last night that I felt you should all know about. Cutting a long story short, my girlfriend and I were scavenging around a wee scottish town at close to midnight trying to find somewhere to get a good curry when we stumbled across a tandoori takeaway. At 11:50 we didn't dare pass by, but neither of us had been there before (and you know how that can go!) so we we're a little hessitant. Anyway, the place smelled wonderful and there was a queue at the door (and no pubs around that I could see), so in we went, the last customers. Now, my girldfriend is Pakistani and she frequently manages to get us some kind of better-than-normal treatment in these places and last night was no exception. When all the others had left and we were the only ones remaining she asked if we could come in and see the kitchen. After 2 minutes of quick and noisy tidying ("In case you think I'm a dirty person", he said!) we got to go into his kitchen and have a look. And it was pretty much what you would expect from a 2-man outlet. Then the amazing bit: my gf asked him outright for the recipe of the base sauce that was sitting in a massive tub in his cooler. And he gave it to us along with cooking instructions. Then, further to that, he cooked our order right in front of us and told us exactly what he was doing. Now 2 things: 1) he was making 2 batches of base sauce over low burner units at the back of the kitchen and one was further along than the other and they both seemed to confirm what he told us about the base sauce, and 2) when we got home and tried it, it was astonishingly delicsious and full of that what-the-hell-IS-that-? taste we're all trying to recreate. Now don't go thinking that because it was a wee scottish town and I'm scottish that I don't know the taste of a good curry: I've eaten curry all round brittain and in dozens of other countries for decades. So this was the real thing. But there's a catch. NOTHING he told me was revolutionary, nothing hard to do, nothing that isn't right under our noses. So, unless there was some kind of exceptional slight of hand, "the taste" is available from practically any supermarket shelf.
I'll be trying the recipe out today and will give you all the feedback. Strange, I already feel like I'm going to fail!
Andrew
Topic: I got the secret! (read 28,056 times)
