JerryM
I am becoming convinced you are right, practice is everything.

How many curries do we cook a week ? Three would be my average, imagine making 50 a night , six days a week.

Inconsistency is my biggest problem, I'm sure if we were cooking more often we would nail it.

I'v followed Julian's recipe for marinating & pre cooking both chicken & lamb & it really is fantastic, both extremely tender & full of flavour.

I've found if you can time it so the chicken finishes cooking & then goes straight in the curry sauce it's at it's best.

Is the difference down to the heat they can get from a commercial stove ?
We have to use bottled gas which produces very little heat, my wife can't get enough heat to stir fry Chinese meals in a wok, I don't think I could burn anything if I tried.

After getting Julian's ebook I bought an aluminium pan, it does seem to produce a sauce that visually looks better but I think the flavour is about the same.

This is one recipe that really does work. I made a batch last weekend, turned out fantastic.

We tried some from a restaurant last night & even though it had probably been cooked in a tandoor it wasn't a patch on the tikka this produces.

My wife & I got a take away last night, she had chicken biriani & I had chicken pathia. Wasn't great but not bad either, to be honest most of mine are better, but woken at one & again at five with thirst.

I thought that had stopped in the eighties, what causes it ? Monosodium glutamate ?  Pat Chapman in his appallingly bad, Indian Restaurant Cookbook of 1989 says powdered garlic contains sulphur dioxide which causes this.

The salt levels didn't seem high but something was doing it.

I'm in south west Ireland so maybe things are different here.