Nice one DD!

Doing that much food can be heavy on the ole limbs, in March this year we moved to a bigger place and ended up inviting everyone we know for a meal (not in one go of course ), but right up until the summer we were fully booked on the weekends entertaining ppl, i ended up cooking curry dishes, with raita, nans or chappattis, rice (only a few got starters) and its bloody hard work and after a couple of months i didn't wanna cook another curry for anyone (apart from me and the family).

Guess i wouldn't make it as a chef then, but i know the pain of a few long months, also know that a lot of people have been really surprised how good Indian food is too. My father in law & mother in law have a sailing boat and they usually spend the summer travelling around the lakes in Sweden, and although my mother in law is a really good cook, on a boat you?re pretty limited to what you can achieve, they turned up at out new place starving for some real food, having lived off ships biscuit's no doubt and i produced 3 curries for them, a stack of Nan's and rice and the usual run of the mill stuff Ive been doing, and my father in law pissed off my mother in law off by eating more than Ive ever seen anyone eat in my entire life; and then saying how grateful he was to eat some real food, lol... he?s eaten curries before, but this was obviously the right food at the right time and he was hungry, hes a tall guy too, never seen anyone so hungry in all my life, it took him about 2 hours to eat everything.

Some how its worth the effort and takes a special breed to be so dedicated to a cuisine.

Keep up the good work!

http://www.futurelooks.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-11497.html

Good point pete someone should pin them down on that point, what curry powder they actually use and is it for trade only or available in the shops

It would explain how you could reuse oil, by returning the oil back from a hot curry to its base.
It would also give you almost variety in flavours and combinations

Youre probably right George, ive not idea what it is, it seems feasable that you could use 3 different bases

I must admit that my curiousity is awaken by the thought of mint jelly steve.e. and  I have to thank you for the offer.
that`s very generous of you! But I think i could persuade my folks to send me some.

England, has so much more choice than Sweden when it comes to supermarket products although they might get some different
stuff than your average english are used to. There is actually something called the  "English Shop" (http://www.englishshop.se/), where I buy some stuff that i just can?t buy in Sweden.
The main thing that i really miss (since moving here 15 yrs ago), is english white sliced, i know that sounds  crazy but all the bread in Sweden is oven baked, no steamed baked bread, and it aweful to toast, so even the stuff they sell in the English Shop isnt completely fresh (its frozen), it still owns when you`re doing toasties. Notice they sell curry paste? (its typically english isnt )

Thanks for your help, regards Ashes

I once saw an aplication of an indian chef looking for work, he wrote that he knew several different styles of cooking and wanted
to get away fromt he 3 pot curry. Obviously the 3 pot curry was the bog standard curry? Sounds good to me, cause that what we are after?

I presumed the 3 pot method was, onion base, spice mixed tomato addition and the final cooking but it is obviously more
complicated than that

Mint jelly? I haven?t heard about that, but sounds interesting, I doubt id be able to find it in Stockholm though .

The paving slab sounds like pure genius George, there definately needs to be something to retain the heat when you
open the oven door, most pizza places in Sweden use an oven that gets upto around 300-320 degrees (can get higher)
which is slightly hotter than the average person can get with a standard home oven,
especially once the door has been opened.

Actually somone recommended me buying some fireproof stone to put in the oven as it will keep the heat when you open the door., but pizza stone sounds great, guess you can just put the nans directly onto the stone.

I have no really good raita recipes, maybe im doing something wrong, but the concerntrated mint i use from the bottle
is mint sauce,  it has vinegar in and leaves a kind of vinagary after-taste. Seems some restaurants haven?t a clue either,
because Ive tasted some pretty aweful raitas in my time. The best ive tasted came from an indian sweetshop in Birmingham.
I was on my way home and stopped off to buy some pakora, usually its cheap munchies food you can eat out the bag,
never been to this shop before, they charged me almost twice as much as the usual place i buy from, and the indian woman
took what seemed like ages to bring it out, but when I tasted it I realised this wasnt the premade warmed in your microwave stuff,
she?d gone out the back and cooked them fresh and a little mint sauce carton came to boot. And it tasted like the best food
youve ever eaten, any time, any where. Thats what I love about Indian food, its unbeatable when its good.

Ah I thought you were going to talk about Lynne Truss, just read of of her books "Eats, Shoots and Leaves"(very funny).

Anyway, "CURRY,A biography,Lizzie Collingham" I read over the summer this year. And it was fun reading where
different curries in your local have originated. Although in the end it was a little "curry-fact overload" so if you
wanna read Curry, read it in small mouthfuls

Another book id recommend is "Star of India : The Spicy Adventures of Curry", another ripping read for the
strange people who are facinated with the world of BIR.