Hi all, i have hunted high and low for lemon dressing but no joy. where can i buy some. is it in the salad dressing sections of supermarkets?

lol , I thought i was the only daft bastard to wear swimming goggles when chopping onions. it seems i am not alone. tee hee 

There is a two tier system of quality with bir cooking. We should have matched a average bir madras by now. The finest may always remain a mystery. of the ten different bir madras i tried recently , 2 were in a different league to most, stunning! . with many unrecognisable flavors and tastes which i know will always elude me. most of the other 8 madras were made from typical ingredients we all use. The fact none of us have managed to emulate even a middle of the road bir madras, can only mean 1 of two things. 1) we cant cook well enough yet. 2) we have all relied too much on the "someone else will work it out for me " attitude. Its just down to getting to know the key ingredients and spices much better. because i work long hours, and commute long distance, i have little time for putting in the long hours of experimenting to get that taste. If more of us adopted the approach of CA, and actually posted new material we might crack this. I will post my efforts in the new year. I intend on doing some new trials over xmas. 

I totally agree Jerry. getting the base the right consistency for your own cooking style is key for me. evaporating the base influences the taste. if you overdo it, the curry can be too rich. if you underdo it, the curry has a poor flavor.

Hi Jerry, i swear these can increase the bir taste. i cooked a trad indian a while a go, with several of these in for about 2 hours. it was one of my best curries ever. i believe these chillies were a factor. as well as a good spice mix, and a long long cook.

Hi Jerry. by toffee taste i mean that delicous almost sweet taste you get sometimes. its in the oil as well.  i always know when my curry has turned out good, if i can leave it to cool for an hour, come back and it still tastes sweet and moorish. at the right temperature, and using the right technique, the garlic, tom puree, spices, pepper slithers, onion, and possibly a bit of methi,seem to combine to make a toffee taste in the oil. in my opinion anyway. i am sure i get it more since going to gas. simply because its so hot. the technique of adding extra water and reducing may help get this taste. but you know that already ).  I believe an overly strong or thick base may reduce this taste. so base is important.  its seems to happen much more with decent fresh base. frozen base is convenient, but never as good. I am with Bruce on that one ! ;D

i agree mate. it takes a brave man to do a side by side comparison ! or a foolish man !!  ;D if i ever make a good replica, i will know instantly. it will be one of lifes great moments 

I used to worry (how sad  ;D ) that we would not get the real bir taste. however recently i tried about 10 different madras from all the ta,s in my area to work out how varied real bir madras can be. i concluded that many are well within our reach. I also concluded that many bir produce almost the same product(madras) , with the same flavour, and hard to tell apart. its just a matter of time until we stumble upon the right recipe to get that subtle tomato tangy taste which seems to be present in real bir madras. the average bir madras is nothing extrordinary. many i tried were little more than a standard tomatoey onion , pepper style base (the old KD base)  with light coriander spicing, and a hint of garlic. i think the safron base may have an inbuilt issue, which is that it is not good, at producing a nice underlying tomato flavour in a curry. i believe the original KD base from her older book is much better for a nice tomato bir madras flavor. over xmas i will test this theory, that the kd base is indeed better at tomatoey style madras. the safron base is very good at all other curries, but not madras i believe. I am sure in the next 1 to 3 years we will be much nearer to our goal. I know i am not that far off now, producing curry which is often fresher and more tasty than real TA's. but not identical i must admit.

Hi Mikka,  yes there is not much margin for error. my main question at the moment is how do bir achieve such a mild toffee taste, without being bland.

after 2 years of bir cooking i am getting a very rich dark toffee taste. with time i need to learn to make this more mild, then i will be identical to a real bir. i think its subtle changes to technique that lead to this taste developing. i still need to learn more to make the taste more mild, like real bir do. i believe its technique improvement and small changes to recipies that are the key