I made this curry for last night's dinner, with mickdabass's Chicken Tikka and following UF's guideline recipe above.
I didn't have any Shan Nihari Masala to hand, so firstly I made up a 100g batch of Nihari masala using the recipe
from this website. Sadly, I had no mace, but the remainder of the ingredient list was comparable to others I looked at on the Web.
I made up CA's Korma sauce using JB's base gravy. I always find the original Korma recipe far too sweet for my personal tastes and those of my family, so I reduced the sugar as I normally do by two-thirds and just used 1 tbsp of plain sunflower oil in preference to the 60ml spiced oil.
As it turned out, I should just have missed the sugar out completely - the honey provided more than enough sweetness to the dish. To illustrate the point, my good lady wife highlighted the overly-sweet taste almost immediately!
I also missed out the green chilli paste in deference to my good lady's delicate tastebuds. In doing so, I think I fundamentally disturbed the balance of the curry. It was very sweet, but without the heat and stimulation of the chilli, it didn't turn out as well as it should have. It definitely needs the heat to counterbalance the sweetness.
So, having said all that, what was the curry like? Well, allowing for the caveats of sweetness and chilli heat - both of which are easily rectified - I thought it was very good! There was a range of flavours permeating through the sauce and the thing that really struck me was it's delicate fragrance which tantalised the nostrils and rolled pleasantly across the palate.
The honey-coated onion and peppers really benefited from their late addition in the cooking process and were both fruity and, as UF mentioned, nicely crunchy.
Nihari Masala

The Finished DishI will definitely make this again, next time completely cutting out the sugar in the Korma sauce and significantly increasing the chilli heat.
Also, as I now have quite a lot of Nihari masala, I think I'll be revisiting Chewy's Nihari curry video!
