I'm a little new to cooking with spices, and for my first attempt at a curry, i chose CA's Madras along with his base and spice mix. The spice mix calls for a lot of powder's, most of which i managed to get in either asda's own brand (apart from the shwartz fenugreek powder).

However no where local seems to have ground cardamom. Even an online search yields no pre-ground cardamom results apart from a forum topic related to a single online store (spice of india or something).

I've found three methods of making my own powder, one is to buy a spice grinder, another to get a mortar and pastle, and a method of using a rolling pin and granulated sugar.

What would you advise me to get (i cant afford some of the more expensive kit i've seen mentioned so far, such as ?100 grinder, which whilst im sure is worth it's weight in cardamom, it's a little too much given i've not made my first curry yet). Or, do i just not bother grinding them at all? (not sure if i would have the sieve them out later though, or do they break down into the gravy?


Side note: Just for the sake of not creating another post or asking another question elsewhere, could you also tell me... The CA recipe calls for fresh tomatoes as opposed to the chopped tomatoes of a lot of others i see. Should i de-seed/de-pulp the tomatoes before using them? Should i skin them before using them? I imagine there will be a decent number of seeds which will be left in the base, and likewise i imagine unskinned tomatoes will end up leaving there skins in the base as i doubt my stick blender will blend them to a point they aren't noticeable (not that ive tried, i just don't expect it too be able to blend that finely). Maybe the secret is that you sieve the base after it's made and its just so common knowledge to most on here, that CA never mentioned that part?

Thought I'd say hi (and to ask a question afterwards). I'm fairly new to Indian curries, I think I've eaten at 4 or 5 restaurants in total, and only in the past few years. Decided to use cooking as a way to escape the day job (which ends up being the evening and night job if I dont force myself into doing something else), been mainly doing Fairly basic herby pastas and general english stuff so figured I would spread my wings.

My only adventure into Indian cooking was a curry recipe I got from a local pub owner, that also did the pub grub. Until today, I couldn't work out why mine never looked like his, I'm assuming after reading stuff on hear, it was that I didn't prepare the base correctly (in fact, I just whacked everything in, in the order he wrote down and cooked it and served). Main reason I think was my error of not boiling the base correctly and really just heating up the mixture until it was hot enough to eat.

Well now I'm here and looking forward to trying some new things with more detailed recipes that hopefully I can't mess up so badly. I was looking at trying a balti to begin with as its what I tend to always eat along with Bhuna, so I have some sort of reference in my mind as to what it should roughly taste like. but I'm guessing after looking at the forum, what I really want is a madras/balti madras, god knows what the Indian restaurants put in a plain balti, but its hard to find reference to such recipes online.

Anyway, I'll stop going on now, and get to the question I mentioned at the beginning.

Could anyone recommend a good balti madras recipe including what base. I've looked at quite a few recipes but I'm getting a bit of information overflow now. I may be being too picky, but I'm looking for something that resembles closely what I'm used to, to begin with. I'm from Birmingham (black country to be specific) and I've never seen a piece of celery, a carrot or a potato in any of the Balti's I've ordered.

If I am being too picky, then feel free to just recommend a place to start I guess. The curries I've had also tend to be a darker colour rather than the lighter golden colours of some of the recipe pictures I've seen here (not that I'm adverse to the golden colour recipes, I was just hoping to start off in my comfort, "what I know" zone then I have a base understanding to then try new things and other recipes).

Right, I'm going to shut up now. Any help would be appreciated. As I'm sure you can see, I'm all confumbled!