Hi Smokenspices,
I might try it again but it won't be or a while as there are other bases I want to try first. As for putting newbies off trying the base, I made the base exactly to recipe (minus one carrot as I didn't have one) and I stand by my report, it was not a very pleasant base. Further the curry as per the recipe was genuinely one of the worst I have ever made. I'm pretty sure now that this is mostly down to it using too much cumin, which is why it reminded me of a jar of Pataks curry sauce.
Now if you look at most of the reports that say it's fab, you'll see that they have not kept to the recipe, adding thing like garlic and ginger which were not specified in your recipe and not using the deggi mirch. But of course these comments are based on the base as originally published so it'll have to wait until I get around to trying it again.