Breaking with recent tradition I've headed into the kitchen two nights running, due to the lack of on topic curry posts on the forum. I was beginning to think I was reading peoples own blogs rather than posts on a site which focused on cooking BIR curry.
Anyway, last night i revisted my original NIS dish., having decided i needed to make a couple of subtle changes to get it nearer to the benchmark dish from my local. I am more than happy with the Elaichi NIS which is just as well, as the last three times i have had it, it is nowhere as good as it used to be. Thankfully, I managed to crack that one in time.
Last nights results:


Quite happy with the results, a nice thick sticky sauce with a lot of bite from the chillis but i really do need to eat the control dish alongside my creation and see if i can detect what may be missing. This could be work in progress for a while :

Tonights efforts:

I decided a chicken phall was the order of the evening as I had some Zaal base left having made up a new batch last week and some blitzed plumb tomatoes in the fridge. So just had to defrost a portion of IFFU's pre-cooked chicken, also cooked last week, a good 4kg portion

.
No surprised as to the ingredients really, tsp g/g, good hpd tsp of Zaal mix powder, a good chef's spoon of chilli powder, pinch of salt. For added flavour half dozen fresh chillis and two dsrt spoons of "naga" paste (viceroy of india scotch bonnet paste) and lastly a little sprinkle of sugar. I was quite hard on the reduction throughout the cooking with each ladle of base, saving the last ladle to loosen the dish up before serving.
Out of 10 i'd give an 8 and am quite happy with my efforts. What made it worthwhile was a though after cooking it. Not sure yet if it could be "eureka" moment for me or not but i'll let you know in due course. My local BIR which i've eaten from for 25 plus years always manages to have a wonderful tomatoey taste to their vindaloo. However, this isn't overpowering and there is no way it is achieved by tomato paste / blended tomatoes alone. It has a unique flavour which i've never experienced in any other restaurant. It can only come from one of two things I believe. More on this when i have had time to experiment a little.
More experiments, the last couple of times i have cooked pilau rice i have used the Zaman method, including milk during the cooking. I must confess that having cooked my pilau rice according to my recipe already posted on the site, it is surprising what a difference it makes introducing a/ washed rice and b/ a different liquid in addition to water. I can't say i have perfected this yet and have still some work to do to arrive at the standard of my normal rice. But as you can see from the picture it looks and tasted perfectly acceptable. I will continue to work on it because it really does make a difference in my opinion. Just like a BIR curry that has the "taste" and "smell", BIR pilau too has it's own unique taste and smell (other than that given by the basmati rice and the whole spice). Using milk in the cooking IMHO provides exactly that. I'm sure after a bit more tweaking i'll be there and will publish if anybody is interested.
Zaman rice

With tonights phall
