It is the moment you have all been waiting for, the results of the Bombay Aloo group test. It was great fun to do and there were two clear winners in Dipuraja and Solarsplace. 4 judges preferred Dips, 2 preferred Solars.

My thoughts were that they were both excellent but I found the mango chutney in Solars just made it a bit too sweet for me. Other people obviously prefer that so I suggest everyone gives them bot a go and either picks their favourite or tweek one of them to your own palate. They are both very good starting places to tailor your own recipe.

Thanks again to all the judges. I will let you all post your tasting notes below but thanks for emailing them over to me.

The link for all of the recipes is: https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=5537.0

<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_8ZixU3Nbf9c/TY4rx9j4U5I/AAAAAAAAAmE/p0dL3YJGVzs/s800/Bombay%20Aloo.jpg" height="800" width="449" />

I think I have them all in now, I'll get them up as soon as I can.

Yeah, I don't think you want to go bigger than 24cm.

Yes it was a real eye opener, especially exciting as their curries are so good.

He said they make their own tamarind paste and will use a whole chefs spoon of it in a batch of masala sauce.

I had one of the 26cm ones on order from Amazon, but I have just cancelled it after watching the guy in Chutneys. I've ordered a 20cm one now which I appreciate is quite small but it is about what they were using there.

I just bought 1kg of the stuff for ?2 at the local Indian Cash and Carry. It says on the tin it is ideal for cooking and frying. As I mentioned above he didn't use a huge amount of it in the dishes, maybe a chefs spoon of it in liquid form. When he made the base sauce he used veg oil.

It was 100% definitely vegetable ghee though. He showed me the pot and the one I have bought it identical (Khanum brand).

I agree trans fats in big quantities are bad for you but they also make food taste good. If I have most of the ingredients I'l try and make a couple of curries with it this weekend and see if there is any difference.

Another point I picked up on was there was no use of spiced oil. Their base is very light on oil so there isn't any to separate off. Their curries very rarely have any sort of oil film on top of them when they are delivered.

That is true, but I'm the only person on here that orders from there (as far as I am aware) and even if I could cook a perfect one I'm not sure I'd be bothered to start cooking after a long day at work on a Friday. The nice thing is, if you master the Roshney, the CTM is child's play.

Another interesting point he made was that you SHOULD burn the spices at the start. He added a bit of veg ghee to the pan, got it very hot then added the spice mix, salt (tiny amount) and a HUGE amount of chilli powder (half a heaped chefs spoonful). This was then fried on its own for a while before the masala and gravy were added.

Also, he had a container full of pre cooked onion and green pepper. I think they had been lightly fried in g/g paste in advance and left to cool.

I think he is happy enough to teach me. Interestingly it includes Pataks Tikka, Tandoori and Kashmiri pastes. He also has a side business as a supplier to all of the other restaurants in Fleet. Every one of them uses the pastes. There was also coconut flour, ground almonds and tamarind paste.

If you guys want to give it a go try and find a day that works for a few people and you can come and eat them at my house rather than having to drive half an hour home. I'm sure Az will pop out to say hello and answer any questions.

Oh one other very interesting point, they use the KTC oil in the bases but they start every dish off with vegetable ghee.

I had a quick Roshney Chicken demo this evening. The chef is really good and he said the dish is his invention. It is different to a Roshni Chicken though. Roshni means 'light' Roshney in his dialect means garlic (I think).

The secret is in the massala sauce. He used a third of a chefs spoon of it in my curry, and a whole spoon in the CTM. The CTM was literally that, a couple of ladles of base sauce and some UHT milk. It tastes very nice though according to my wife.

The Roshney is fairly simple with the trick being right at the end. He fried some garlic in a special cast iron pan, then when it was just browning he added some of the main pans sauce into it which caused a big flambee. The flambeed garlic was then added to the dish and quickly mixed in. This guys has some awesome skills as well as being a top bloke. He is hopefully going to start playing for our 5 a side team on Wednesdays.

So after 2 disappointing years of chilli growing I've bought the seeds for this years plants. Its a little bit late in the year o be planting them but I usually keep them in our conservatory so they should be fine.

In 2009 I grew Super Chillies which were very prolific and looked pretty cool but the chillies weren't hot at all. I would add about 20 to a chilli con carne and still have to add lots of hot chilli powder.

I also grew Dorset Naga's which took an absolute eternity to germinate but eventually I managed to get quite a few fruits. While they were clearly stinking hot, the pungent taste was pretty revolting. It completely overpowered everything else anywhere near it.

So last year I went for Jalapenos, pinnochios nose and pusa jwala. It turns out fresh jalapens on pizza aren't as nice as pickled ones from a jar. The Pinnchios nose were good fun to grow and they really were enormous! The pusa jwala I grew as a green finger chilli but they weren't right. They were too light in colour and didn't have a lot of heat in them.

So this year I have already planted some seeds that I dried from green chillies I bought at the Indian grocery store. 2 weeks later and no shoots so I'm thinking they probably aren't going to germinate.

I have also bought 3 types from chilliseeds.co.uk. They have a new type in called curry chilli which is apparently specifically designed for the green finger chilli curry market. We shall see! I also will be growing some birds eye chillies which I use all the time. Then purely to see the WI lady judges face at the annual show, I'll be growing yellow Peter Peppers. If you don't know what they look like do a quick Google images search!