I was just checking out a bir on the other side of town, and my jaw nearly fell off, when i read the price of a madras and basmati rice. yes folks, 9 pounds for madras, and 3 pounds for some basmatti rice. has anyone found a madras which is more expensive? or is this a new record?  the balti dish was 12 pounds , and rice was extra !! no wonder the uk has a credit crunch !! 

Hi jerry, so where does the yellow oil come from? i assume its from the base oil reclaiming.

Thanks jerry, any tips from old school members like you are always welcome !

hi , i recomend buying the "50 greatest indian curries" book.  lots of classics in there, i have tried at least 30 of them. most are top notch . no base required   

Hi Paul P, i didnt mean to put anyone off the safron base. i made it alot for 2 years, and is very good at balti, dansak, korma, jalfrezzi. but if you are after a great madras, i believe its not the best base to be experimenting with. good luck

CA, i was not endorsing the whole of the kd book. just the base. I too never got on well with the recipies for the curries. But i have been pleasantly suprised with re visiting the base. In conjunction with all the new techniques i have picked up in the last 2 years since first using that book. In retrospect it probably suits my own style of cooking, largely copied from my local bir. namely, adding all the oil at final curry making stage. That could be why it seems to work better for me than safron base. I was possibly being a little harsh about the safron.

Its odd but i find all the best bir madras have very little heat, and minimal chilly. i found the lower class bir use alot of chilly in madras to cover up the lack of taste. getting the right heat is sooo simple. just play around with different combinations of 1) chilly powder  2 or 3 tsps 2) green chilles chopped with extra chilly powder or 3) red and green chillies mixed and chopped , and no chilly powder. its usually green chilly that gives the bir heat you sound like you like

no i have not tried the latest kd base. how does it differ to the old one?

how many very thin unusually bland bases do we have on this site? there is an odd lack of bases which fall into this category. i know of none, and i have tried 8 at least.

i have been using an adapted version of the old smelly kd base recently. i really would advise it, as its very close to cooking with the real bir base i once purchased. the texture of the final curry is exactly like a real bir. i also believe it will be more suited to adding half a chef spoon of spice mix per curry. (like real bir do) a tsp of spice mix per curry is all you can get away with , using safron style bases. lets face it many members have posted new base recipies in the last year, but they are still closely resembling the safron base. Its about time we all realised the safron base is a time waster. if none of us are happy with our curry, and we all use safron derivatives, it just illustrates how crap that base is. my local bir would never use it, i know that for sure. it would really take the edge off there curries. there own base is bland and thin and pukey, but boy does it deliver a stonking madras.