I too have had a Peshwari Naan with an orange coating or stuffing and I suspect that it is the addition of orange food colouring powder to the ingredients already mentioned, perhaps with a sweetener - honey or brown sugar?

Like others I guess Madhur Jaffrey and Pat Chapman have been inspirations but I wondered - how far back do your curry books go?

OK you'll find curry recipes in very old general cookery books (probably a relic of the days of the Raj) but what I'm talking about here is book dedicated to curry or to Indian Cookery.

The first two books I bought, probably in the early 1980s and I think were purchased at John Menzies (former large retailer in Scotland bought over by WH Smith) and they are:

"The Complete Book of Curries" by Harvey Day (1978) and "Cook Indian" by P. Majumder (1980). The Harvey Day book, is I believe a compendium of five curry books written between 1955 and 1970. The Majumber book is pretty much a home style cookery book.

Any other gems lurking in your loft?

I use old round metal biscuit tins, like the kind you get at New Year and I have large packets of whole spices in a couple of tins. I then freshly grind things like coriander, cumin, garam masala etc in small batches and keep them in jars in another tin. The tins then go into a kitchen cupboard so overall they are kept away from heat and light, and to a certain extent, air. Have been using this method for years with no problems.

I tried this recipe today for lunch and they turned out great, I used a wok for deep frying, you don't need an electric deep fryer.

cheers CA!

I'm not sure about potatoes costing less than onions, but can see why they could add bulk (potato also used as a thickener in other types of cooking, e.g. soups). I'm wondering about what the minimum ingredients would be for a decent base, with the flavours being added to individual curries at the cooking / assembling stage. I like the idea of maybe experimenting with a base that has only onions, garlic, ginger and water.

What do you think?

Panpot, I have seen the little Ashoka book in Borders bookshop so I might go in and write down the recipe lol!!!!

Cheers for that Unclebuck and and happy 2009 to you when it comes.

Josh you may be right about the cut and paste idea, so simple and yet it makes perfect sense, maybe it is as simple as that.

Try this recipe which I have made countless times and always with success. it is a bit fiddly and time consuming but well worth the effort:

https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=3003.msg26612#msg26612

Try this recipe that I have posted already:

https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=2745.msg24356#msg24356