just for the record guys , i discussed how the bir chef i know  learnt his trade, and he said the following. " the first dish he learnt was madras. Once this is mastered all other dishes are easy. "  he even demonstrated how rogan josh, bhuna, just require  a slightly different cooking technique and a tiny amount of extra ingredients such as a bit more garlic, and onion. and importantly alot more evaporation than madras. so why dont you all concentrate on madras as your starting point. it really is the foundation of all bir curries.  i no longer cook anything but madras, as all other dishes are just a distraction. i reckon in about 5 years i will have truly made a 100 percent clone of at least one local bir madras. i am pretty close now.

as yet there is no madras recipe which is tried and tested with this base. so picking a random madras recipe may not work as expected with this base. i would adapt the taz/mick dopiaza into a madras.

CA, Jerry i think i see what you are attempting. personally i am happy with where i am at. but good luck, it sounds like it would be useful for some of our newer members.

my own benchmark is very simple. produce a madras which tastes 99 percent the same as 1 of the 10 good bir i buy curries from. It does not have to be as good as the very best as thats unrealistic. simples !  ;D  you cant specify a benchmark on a web site unless we all taste each others efforts. it would be like having a dancing competition, where the judges are all blind  ;D  it would be doomed to failure ! just like a cr0 benchmark.

yes they are CA, but i sometimes feel some members anglosise them a stage further still. But thats a personal taste thing , obviously. Some bir are packed every week yet i dont enjoy there curries. These are the ones that push anglosising indian curry to the extreme. it pays well, but i hate there curries. i can tell some members here like that approach. and emulate it in there curries. obviously it comes back to a personal preference again. in many ways it adds more interest to the forum, if some members go off on different tangents to others. its all good

i just fry the onions in 3rd of a cup of oil for 15 mins then commence the rest (spanish onions) . i dont cook the other ingredients that long after. the whole base is done in an hour. with a handblender for speed. it just brings out the natural sugars in onion. i dont use sugar or any similar stuff for curry. i want a truly authentic bir curry. not some anglosised version with sugar and worcester sauce.

hi razor, yes banjurra paste is great stuff. i made some last week. i also let the onions in the base pre cook for a long time in some oil to bring out the sweetness, before adding the rest of the base ingredients.

temporary patches like sugar or honey or golden syrup dont stand the test of time, from my experience. they are essentially only patches. the bir chef i know sees sweetness coming from ingredients like fennel, tomato, onions, not sugar. for me its a big step back adding sugar to e.g madras. try getting the sweetness from other ingredients , its alot better flavour.

every indian cornershop has a guy who thinks they know the secret bobby! mine swore it was down to cream and ghee.

Hi secret santa, yes i was careful to specify madras only, as i know it is used by some bir. And i new someone would put in there two penny worth, tee hee ! although i can say the bangledesh bir, i frequent has no worcester sauce in the kitchen. do you use it still?