Last night everything went wrong for me - combination of a bad recipe and my mistakes.

First off the bad recipe. I made the KD Beef Badami from the second curry secret book.
That was a waste of over 6 quid in quality rump steak. When I added the single cream near the end of cooking it turned the most horrible pale colour and was very unpleasant to look at yet alone taste. I won't be doing that one again!

The missus was uneasy about eating just a load of meat so I knocked together a mixed vegetable bhuna to balance things out. Big mistake here - I used mixed frozen veg and frozen peppers. In doing so I completely lost control of the texture of the veg. Next time I'll go back to using fresh veg pre-cooked properly like I normally do.

Finally, and a bit more worrying for me, I managed to burn the garlic in the veg bhuna and I'm not sure why cos I didn't think I did much different except using about 50% more fresh garlic than normal. The taste of burnt garlic is not good and pretty overpowering.

The pilau rice was ok but the cooking time is critical - I think I need a kitchen timer as it was a little overdone.

Oh well lessons learnt. 

Hi JerryM,

Looking forward to your opinions on this base - could be the next one to try for me.

Do you rate the reclaimed oil? - I guess you use it for the stage 2 final cooking.

One thing struck me about adding excess oil then removing most of it for reclaim - many of the flavour components from the spices dissolve in oil rather than water so I wondered if adding excess oil then removing it would weaken the spicyness of the remaining base. I suppose if you cook later on with the reclaimed oil you are then putting these flavours back into the curry.

Just one more thing - how long do you keep the reclaimed oil?

Cheers,

Paul.

The difference between frozen and fresh base doesn't seem much to my old taste buds and is certainly not the missing link to achieve 100% BIR for me.

And what is fresh? Our curry guru Bruce Edwards doesn't freeze his bases but he reckons they taste best on day 4 after leaving them in the fridge.

I'm creating pretty yummy curries these days that easily beat any supermarket factory curries or curries in a jar so I don't really care if don't get 100% BIR.

Hi Paul,

I bought some of the Mr Huda curry paste just before I discovered this forum. The stuff is still in the jar unopened as I'm happy with my cooking results now.

I might give it a try as a small extra ingredient in my curries since I've paid for it!

I have used the Mr Huda Tikka marinade which I thought was excellent and will probably buy some more of that. I think these pastes are a little more subtle than the Pataks range but they are fairly pricey.

Paul.

I freeze my bases because I have to really. I'm only making 2 curries per week so the stuff would go off before I used a batch.

I'm not into making smaller batches of base (less than 2 litres) as I don't have time to prepare bases regularly, and the results may not be so good.

I'm afraid freezing is a necessary evil for me!

I too very much doubt that TAs would freeze any base they make - I'd be surprised if it even reached a fridge overnight.

I personally don't have a problem with the taste of a thawed out frozen base.

I make a similar dish myself although I have to keep it fairly mild for the missus.

I would use a spice mix (at least corriander/cumin/turmeric mix) at the frying stage and not just rely on the contents of the base to provide these flavours, unless making a korma.

Secondly I am loathe to add water to these type of curries - you only used 150 ml base and then added water. I would have used more base to water down.

The only curries I'll add water to are dishes like dhal.

Regards,

Paul.

I don't know if this is any good from the Hairy Bikers cooking series.

Monster Doner Kebab Recipe - Hairy Bikers - BBC

If you google Donner Kebab recipes you get quite a few hits.

Hi Chris,

Yes - that's it the Ghandi - we were strongly advised against it and it always looked a bit scruffy. So it's closed now - I haven't been to Oliva (or Spain) for about 14 months.

PS: Want to buy a flat in Castello-de-Rugat - going cheap! Been trying to sell for over a year. I should never have watched "A place in the Sun" in 2003/2004. 

Hi Panoalto,

Valencia - I've got a flat in a small town between Gandia and Xativa. I think it is probably north from where you are if you are near Denia.

There are relatively few Brits in this area and as you say very few Indian restaurants let alone BIR style ones. I have travelled quite a lot in Spain away from Brit popular areas and I have noticed quite a few Chinese restaurants but no Indian ones. There is a takeaway in Oliva on the main paseo but I've never tried it.

I don't think Spanish people like Indian food hence the dearth of Indian restaurants.

There a quite a few Indian restaurants in more Brit popular areas but a lot of them are not very good.

Welcome to the forum - were you thinking of starting a BIR style business?

OK - I made this base with only half a tin of tomatoes.

Result - Changed the colour to a more orangey/yellow tint. Still tasted good on its own - perhaps the flavour of the fresh corriander shines through a little more.

Made my regular chicken bhuna last night and I can't really say it tasted much different from previous meals although my wife seemed to enjoy it more than usual.

Conclusion - I don't know whether this improved it or not - it still tasted good.
It may make a better Korma due to less tomatoes but the change is quite subtle.