I've never strayed far from Lamb or Beef Madras/Vindaloo/Phall (prefer lamb where available - some BIRs won't do lamb but will do beef  i thought the cow was the sacred animal, shows my ignorance)

At home I'm still trying to emulate the local BIRs madras as a starting point (thanks to input from various books as c2g, undercover curry, kd, pat chapman i think i'm almost there with the consistency and overall taste, but a significant liquourice/coriander aftertaste still eludes -  already using fresh coriander, tried dried coriander leaf, fennel powder and seeds, and tamarind paste, none quite get "that" taste - ground star anise and/or jarred pataks mango and chilli pickles are next on the to-try list) but almost exclusively using beef because lamb is dearer (cue the joke about venison...) :

if it's any consolation Naga when colouring my rice with the Asda liquid colourings it always comes out with no clear difference in colour even if I put loads of it in, I've tried the C2G method of cooling the rice quickly and adding dots of colouring then mixing through but even with that it's nowhere near as vibrant as some of the pictures on here.  Tried with the oven method of fixing colour; end up with lovely seperate dry grains but a bit too many burnt ones...  Encouraging to see that it's not the liquid colouring that needs changing but method that needs tweaking, will get there in the end without resorting to ye olde turmeric - one colour out of three just doesn't cut it anymore!  

At 35 years young (long-term gamer ) I have a PS3 with logitech g25 (steering wheel) and gameracer elite (car seat), GT5 is my preference - I play driving games almost exclusively, but I do sample other genres occasionally.

The wife has a wii (wii-fit/sports), and 6 year-old stepdaughter has a nintendo ds (anything branded zhu-zhu, barbie or hello kitty and she's champing at the bit :)

http://www.youtube.com/user/dipuraja1

it's a matter of taste, whichever you prefer 

i recall pataks madras tinned sauce was great but they don't seem to do the tins anymore, the jars are nowhere near as nice, nor are the pastes

Maybe it's like lots of things that they change the recipes for less salt/healthier versions but lose taste in the process - pot noodles spring immediately to mind!

Not yet, but the Undercover Curry recipe is very similar and tastes great.  I very much like the alternative of 3 parts white bread flour to 1 part wholemeal bread four if you've run out of atta flour.

Asda Smart Price curry sauce (9p per jar!) tastes exactly like the curry sauce that chippies round here supply if it helps.

http://groceries.asda.com/asda-estore/search/searchcontainer.jsp?trailSize=1&searchString=smart+price+curry+sauce&domainName=Products&headerVersion=v1&_requestid=42882

Asda also do own-brand curry sauce gravy granules in a drum that you make up yourself, but you'll need to add your own sultanas, same taste applies as above.

I got mine, along with a curry spoon, from Julians Curry2Go webshop

http://www.curry2go-online.com/store.html

Worth a PM to ask when he plans to get more stocks in?

A quick poll.... do you think that the madras in the youtube video gives a good representation of what madras tastes like in your local BIR?

I only ask because, like Dave Loydens book, it produces a very nice tasting result but my local BIRs madrasses seem to be devoid of tomato, lemon and garlic tastes and their differences between their standard curries, madrasses and vindaloos are just in the heat.  I'd like to know what others reckon?  Are my local curry houses poor or just different in their approach?