I bought a chilled food dish from Aldi yesterday - Chicken Tikka Masala - to try out my Meetha Attar for the first time. Well, I had to start somewhere! The Aldi dish is half decent and it wouldn't have been worth me making my own CTM, for this simple test. I added about 0.25 tsp.  The test failed in that it seemed to knock out the pleasant normal flavour of the sauce and not add anything better. Next, I will try adding it to plain boiled rice, without any other flavourings. I hope it doesn't poison me. I think the amazon listing mentioned 'food grade' but there's nothing on the bottle. The aroma of the Meetha Attar is very pleasant on it's own and seems vaguely familiar. Perhaps it was used as a room fragrance in a restaurant somewhere, rather than being tasted in food.

Secret Santa - I too am keen to compare the expensive 100ml of attar bought on amazon with relatively low cost Kewra water. I need to buy a new bottle of kewra water but when I smelled kewra water before, the aroma was minimal, whereas the aroma from the attar is superb. I think Bob may have been on to something and it was good of him to start this thread. But he hasn't logged in since his last post on 17 June.

Secret Santa - where did you read that meetha attar is from screwpine oil?  I just found a youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMUm5149QVk

...where several ingredients are listed including kewra, rose, saffron and cardamons. If so, it's more like a blend based on someone's recipe, or perhaps various brands vary, somewhat like garam masala.

My amazon order for 100ml Meetha Attar arrived today and I'm encouraged by the feint whiff when I opened the packet. It's not leaking, as such but a trace may have got out. Like secret santa with kewra water, I thought the aroma seemed familiar but it could be from around 25 years ago when I enjoyed some meals in India and the Middle East. I must compare it with kewra water. If they are based on the same source elements, maybe the Meetha Attar is somehow superior a bit like you can buy different qualities of vanilla. It's not the aroma of BIR pilau rice but it could be useful in biriani, korma and some other dishes.

Quote from: Peripatetic Phil on March 26, 2020, 07:55 PM
So when you made the Aldi version, George, did you follow the (almost unreadable) recipe on the jar ?  I ask because I am cooking it tonight, and while I am being guided by the recipe, I am making a number of real-time adjustments :

• Use 300gm lamb instead of 340gm (all I had)
• Use 50ml oil (mustard oil) rather than 15ml
• Bhoon the spices before the lamb, not vice-versa
• Use only half of the sauce.

** Phil.

Sorry for the delay in replying. I followed the quantities and order of adding ingredients as on the jar. I then added the sauce slowly, a bit at a time until all the sauce had been used up and the sauce was bhuna-like, i.e. mostly evaporated off with not much left. So the sauce would have been quite concentrated and maybe that's why it tasted good.

Quote from: Gav Iscon on May 03, 2020, 11:43 AM
The hardwood ones I used to use used to chuck out loads of soot as well. At the end of the day, they both churn out products of combustion..

Interesting point. Does anyone know if it's risky to eat pizzas which have been sprinkled with quite a lot of ash and soot?

Aldi are selling an upmarket style pizza oven for

Quote from: Garp on July 03, 2020, 01:48 PM
Al from Al's Kitchen YouTube channel featured on Radio 5 Live this afternoon.
Anyone tried any of his stuff?

This reminds me of possibly the first non-Asian to have some success with selling books and getting himself into the media - P Chapman in the mid 80s. It had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the recipes, which I regard as dire. There are so many Indian chefs on youtube, who needs to waste time watching channels like Als kitchen?

Quote from: Robbo141 on July 03, 2020, 05:31 PM
for the life of me I cannot get that txt file to convert to .xlsx.  Tried Save As, tried simple renaming,

I just downloaded it and saved it as the text file. I then renamed it with the .xlsx suffix and it immediately opened in Excel. So easy, thanks to Phil's clever workaround! Have you got it working yet?

Quote from: Robbo141 on July 01, 2020, 11:48 PM
When skill, knowledge, experience and a good eye can