George's proposal to have a "curry meet" where members cook and taste each other's curries...This would be the ultimate. Throw a few local BIRs in wherever the (assume UK) venue is. Give me minimum 18 months notice and I will be there... granted its less than 20k km. I would love to meet George, JerryM, CA, SnS, Mick, Haldi, Unclebuck, Stew, Chinois, Curry King.... and the list goes on. Maybe Bruce Edwards would pay a visit.
Many thanks to several of you who have expressed a degree of initial enthusiasm for a meet-up of some type. One option is for a group to descend on someone's house, hold endless discussions and watch the host cook a meal. I fear it might quickly be a case of too many chefs spoil the broth; hence my suggestion instead for a series of regional dinner parties, something along the lines of the TV series 'Come Dine With Me'.
4-6 members in each region would agree to host an Indian dinner party in turn. That way, costs would be shared because you'd provide a meal for 5 guests, say, and then enjoy 5 meals in return.
People are hard to impress. My guess is that, with the best will in the world, we may think most of the meals are frankly 'OK, not bad' but hardly amazing. I hope I'm wrong and that everyone can lay on a superb spread of BIR-type food which puts most actual BIRs to shame. Either way, it seems almost inevitable that a handful of dishes might stand out, to general agreement. These would be the dishes to focus on, subsequently. Even better, if one or two members stood out as true 'master chefs' people might be more inclined to believe what they say.
I do not envisage any attendance at the host's home while each meal is being prepared. We'd turn up, like at a restaurant or on 'Come Dine With Me.' Any drill-down into recipes to investigate 'how it's done' can be done later or in discussion, while we're eating, e.g. 'that's delicious - what's in it?'.
Also like on that TV series, we might not get on. There might be personality clashes and the thought of up to 6 dinner parties with the same awful people might fill us with horror. That would be part of the challenge. Perhaps we need to meet for a coffee and see if each group gets on, to some extent, before moving to the dinner parties.
There might also be issues if you have a partner/and or children. I live alone, so it's not a problem. I don't need to tell anyone to buzz off for a weekend, or that I'm booked for the next 5 Saturdays, in addition, going to CR0 members dinner parties, to which the partner is not invited.
With 11,000 members of this forum, there must surely be enough of an interest to hold dinner parties in, say, 8 regions x 6 people = 48 members, or however many people are interested. Perhaps try one region first, and see how it goes.
The overall objective could be described as a sort of 'calibration' to see where we're all at, in our search for the best BIR-type tastes. It should also be fun.
Topic: Come Dine With Me (Read 37958 times)
