Rather than the soup you could add passata as the total quantity/ volume of tomatoes (soup and tinned plum) and add half a teaspoon of sugar and a generous ounce  - maybe 2 -of unsalted butter. I have done this in none BIR (mostly weird Italian short-cut) recipes and it works the same. Somehow adding your own poisons is more satisfying than letting Mr. Heinz do it for you.

I am with pizzaman. Today is a very good day to be a Leeds fan. I live halfway between Bradford and Leeds: pretty much the best of both worlds - decent curry 5 miles south west, a proper football team 5 miles south east. Plenty of good beer in between.

OK. We need a nonsense chat thread. And LIDL is getting way too much publicity by being the headline. This is getting silly. And Morrisons have the best BIR-too-lazy-to-make-cook-chilled curries.

Go and buy them if you can't be arsed to make your own.

(I have shares in Morrisons. Eat away!)

Mike

God this is getting circular!

Earlier I added a comment that many supermarket curries actually ARE BIRs. As I said the Mumtaz restaurant supplies Morrisons and ASDA I am sure.

And the mass production argument is a bit fallacious: if you are looking for a homemade version of a takeaway, the hardest thing is scaling down to a few portions a process designed to throw out a couple of hundred covers a night - and therein lies the issue.

Personally I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that if I want a restaurant style curry, I go to a restaurant. If I want to cook it myself I get homestyle curry. Not an issue really. And if I can't get to the takeaway I have a freezer full of BIR curries thanks to ASDA.

Incidentally I have a Goan Goddaughter. Having been there to visit many times not one single dish I have been served by my family out there has the slightest resemblance to anything you get in a BIR. It is still, however, delicious. (And usually too hot)

Mike

Hey Ray

You actually re-make my point. The BIR taste IS a Britished (no such word) take on a whole continent's cuisine. Whilst there is a generic BIR taste that we all dream of, or think we know I believe it is different for all of us.

So as the sub-continent has provided us with a diverse selection of chefs (from Finland to Turkey to keep to the analogy) so our own regional tastes have taken this diverse group in different directions.

A curry in Bradford is not the same as one in Birmingham irrespective of the origins of the chef. However a South Indian chef in Bradford would also cook a different meal from a Punjabi
chef in Bradford. There are two variables here. You only need to see the colour of the mint sauce with your bhaji, it changes from city to city. This is doubly regional.

My central point, I guess, is that there is no such thing as BIR. Or rather there there is, but only in the sense that there is a shop down the street that we love, need and cherish when we are hungry. And it is spicy. To bracket it all together under "BIR" is to ignore two massive variables and effectively promotes the lazy generic chefs who just turn out what they think we want to eat. Indo/Pakistani food is better than that.

(And the kid went to sleep, thank God)

Mike

I ask this because in hoping to make a curry equal to or better than our local takeout the whole concept has been homogenized; as if there is a single style to be aspired to.

Is the aim to re-create a narrow form of anglicised Bangladeshi type of food as served in a majority of UK Indian restaurants, or does the definition reach as far as the predominantly Punjabi food of Bradford? Or the South Indian Vegi fare of such as Drummond Street near Euston Station? Or Nepalese, or Balti in Birmingham?

It is almost like people are trying to design a car with no idea if they want a Bentley or a Nissan Micra. I do think that the cuisine we aim to replicate, and the restaurants we all eat in, are too varied for such a catch-all acronym as BIR.

Can you imagine an Indian website that aspired to cook authentic restaurant European food?

A little more investigation in to the origins of the chefs we aspire to copy (are they Swedish or Spanish to carry the analogy on) would give greater insight in to the sometimes subtle (often major) differences of spicing and lead us to a greater insight as to what we are looking for, and then how to cook it as we want it.

(The kid was playing me up, sorry for the rant!)

Keep on cooking

Mike

Axe,

I agree. By turns I try to be critical, helpful and inquisitive. I like this board and hope at least that some things I contribute provoke conversation. I am still looking for some recipes myself as it happens. But I would never decry anyone coming here for advice and then buggering off.

If they have nothing to say - well, maybe they have nothing to say. Or maybe (unlike me) a day job? And wouldn't you like to think that a contribution you had made sparked some recipe in to life, somewhere in the world?

A more pertinent question may be really why they join and go? The content here is deep but also a little labrynthine. (Without the help of several members I would have given up ages ago).
M

I am led to believe that both Morrisons and Asda curries on the chill counter are made by Mumtaz of Bradford.... a fine establishment with a thoroughly hygenic factory in its rear that efflux fresh daily produce. Said effluviant is available monthly on special offer at Asda for one pond coin per tray. It is jolly tasty too.

And after such a glowing report, and on such an influencial micromarketing format as this, I expect freebies forever. Unless the owner reads it and gets out the dictionary - but he is too busy adding a new diamond to his M5 probably. (Is it libel or slander to have a go on the internet?).

LIDL is good.

Long live homemade

It started as a "Can The Blue Men Play The Whites?" thread. (Bonzo Dog Google Band - DooDah them younger readers!).

Somehow turned north vs. south, real vs. fizzy beer, and the glory of fish and chips. This is surreal. And I love it.

Relating to earlier, surely a good cook can make anything: I can make a brilliant burger, but not a Mickydees; a great pizza but not a Pizza Hut pizza and best of all I can make great curry. But can I hellaslike (northern) make one like my local take away.

In Search of the Lost Chord..... Moody Blues?

On the odd occasion my wife refuses a curry, and I insist on having one, we end up ordering her a pizza or kebab from my favourite indo/pakistani takeaway. They make sublime curries but their pizzas are rubbish, ditto kebabs and burgers. Ironically it is called "Chicago Pizza and Balti Bazaar", the pizza bit is first.

Nearly all local (West Leeds) pure takeaways (i.e no restaurant) try this which begs the questions:

Firstly why do they try and multi-task? Secondly, is it actually possible to do all these things well at all? Thirdly, is this a west Yorkshire thing or is it everywhere?