I raided my deep freeze last night and served up three curries
Two were mine, one was from a restaurant
The restaurant curry was a vegetable dupiaza
This is desribed as a medium curry cooked with pepper,tomatoes, onion and special spice
One of my curries was a vegetable vindaloo, and was almost identical to the dupiaza, in texture flavour and taste
The only difference was obvious
The vegetables from the restaurant had an aroma of panch poran
Check below, for spice break down
http://cooking4her.blogspot.com/2005/07/panch-poran-five-spice.html
I am moving house, but when I am settled I will experiment with this stuff
It has been mentioned before (Bruce Edwards article for precooking)
but maybe it's a whole lot more important than I realised
It's definitely a missing flavour, if I am trying to match my local takeaway
Has anyone else cooked with it?

At the start of the gravy cooking
I've not tried it yet, but will

Ifindforu seems like a genuinely nice person with chef experience
He emails back, if you have any questions
I bought some of the spice
It was dispatched promtly (24 hr turnaround)
We have all got to buy spices from somewhere , and I don't mind paying a little over the odds for something special.
I don't want to upset anyone
Perhaps it reflects my cooking ability
But I am no closer to the restaurant flavour, by using this spice
I have no doubt that it IS a quality spice mix and used by some restaurants
But I am still not achieving the missing flavour
I don't think restaurant chef's understand our problem, unless thay have tried to cook restaurant meals at home.
The ones, who have, all said it couldn't be done.
Maybe they are right
The pdf he provides, from his website, is an edited version of the "secrets" ebook
That confuses me
Why would he use that?
I made a chicken curry recipe he provided
It was a very good homestyle curry

Thanks for trying it
I'm glad you had some success and avoided the temptation to change it, before an initial test.
I think it does lack a little something
Frying some garlic ginger till brown, and adding at the start might do it
I am sure that somewhere, around this recipe, is right
I have revised my thinking of BIR cooking since tasting genuine restaurant gravy
It is very nice
I wasn't expecting that
It has a subtle spiced taste with a lovely flavoured oil
Nearly everything I liked about curries (except the heat) was already there
My goal is to reproduce that base
I recently got a tip to fry a few cloves with garlic ginger, at the start of the cooking
This is never going to end, is it?
We all keep trying

Hi Curryqueen,
                    do you think your curries have the complete taste now?
Are they the same as your local takeaway?

Never mind Mark
It drives you mad, doesn't it?
If any restaurant chefs, read these pages, they surely must be very amused.
The lengths we go to, and such determination
I hope, with Heidi's help, we will be able to move on again

That is definitely worth a try
I made a base with no onions, just tom soup
It was pleasant but not right
Using it as apart of the recipe, might do the job

I think we can all make a good base
There are lots of good ones on this site
But the oil is very special from my local takeaway
Sometimes it is more intense than other days
But the whole aroma of the meal, it's essence, is in it
If you get a drip, on the table, it will make the whole room smell the next day
I think this oil is created by temperature, volume of ingredients and time cooked
I don't think cooking a bulb of pureed garlic in half an inch of oil, will give the same result as cooking six bulbs in 3 litres of oil
I think if you tasted the oil, from both, the six bulb oil would have a different flavour
I am sure, if this were not so, someone would have arrived at the perfect restaurant curry by now.
Maybe this is why Darth is so pleased with his results
He cooks in very large quantities
Unfortunately I can't use those amounts on my cooker (and I don't have space to freeze that much either)

That oil looks the business!
This is the final piece of the puzzle
Well done Mark
I can't wait for you to cook with it!

We all know it
There is a difference we can't get
I am really looking forward to this report
Apart from Curryqueen, Curry King and myself, noone has actually seen a base prepared,
and noone has seen the full sized base done
What worries me, is the similarity between the demos
There is never a new ingredient
I tried the Bengal Cuisine demo base again
You  know, it's pretty good
Just lacking that special taste
I think it's more to do with the reuse of old oil, than fresh ingredients in the base.
There must be at least twenty of us, who have been trying all manner of ideas, for at least ten years
What are the chances that we couldn't have stumbled on to the origin of the taste?
Every chef, I have spoken to, confirms the same basic ingredients
Some say boil certain things, some say fry them, but always the same general ingredients
There was a time when I was so bothered, by not knowing, that it was driving me crazy
I even bought a tandoor thinking that had some link to the puzzle.
That was over ?400!!!
Whatever the secret is, I am sure of one thing:-
It must be cheap
One chef told me that they don't always put tomatoes in the base, because they get too expensive.
So cost rules
I get suckered into "make curry like a restaurant" scam on the internet too!
I'm still that desperate to know
I am really hoping on this report