have you tried just the oil the poppadoms are cooked in, not a big fan of poppadoms and we don't fry them if we have them at home.
Yes I used oil from frying about 50 poppadoms
That was my last serious curry experiment
I couldn't eat most of the poppadoms, and ended up chucking them away
That's when I thought "this perfect curry search, has gone a bit too far"
I was spending about five hours preparing a curry that wasn't as good as a bought one costing a fiver
I also had a freezer full of various curry gravies that didn't produce what I wanted
These last few months I have got some of my old enthusiasm back and I bought the "The Glasgow Indian Takeaway Recipe Book"
The base requires 4 kg of onions
That's a lot of onions
So I'm making half measures
The author claims that the "secret" to takeaway flavour is the length of time you cook the onions
That theory is consistant with Julian's base recipe
But it rather flies in the face of the majority of others on this site (including one's posted by me)
If I could make a madras to curry house standard, I would be happy
Time will tell