Sorry couldnt resist that one  ;D

Hence the dish Chicken Tarka, its like vindaloo but 'otter

Good to hear Andy, any personal attacks will be removed as soon as we see them, and everyone should feel free to use the report post to moderator function if they think someone is out of order.

YF: I dont think so, maybe a hint but nothing compared to the taste and smell you get from a main dish from this place

You can smell this restaurant around the town in a 300 yard radius

They certainly did, they had containers with spice mix, chilli powder, pre cooked onions, methi leaf, sugar, salt, pre cooked peppers and probably quite a few more I cant remember

My local, superb BIR restaurant run by 2 brothers.

To me service is equally as important as the quality of the food and both are excellent here, definitely has the taste!

Just had a really interesting night at my local BIR, as a one off for the regulars and to raise money they did a race night which was good fun with a buffet of various dishes, at the end of the night one of the owners invited me into the kitchen for a natter and a look around.

I quized him on pastes added at the end of the final dish cooking and he said generally they dont but do in some dishes like rogan josh, I have already asked him about preparing tomato paste and they do fry it with garlic much as CP described.

He knows about cr0 and is thinking of doing a cooking course for us, this place has the taste so it maybe worthwhile if we can get enough of us to commit.

I saw a pasanda being cooked whilst I was in the kitchen and something amazed me, they had 3 x ~3 inch long casia sticks cooking in a single portion!, I saw the chef fish them out and asked him if that was a dish for staff but he said no it was for a customer.

I stuck my hand in their tandoor as well and lost all the hair on my hand, bloody hot those restaurant tandoors!

Amongst the ingredients at the side of the cooker i saw 2 tubs of goo, one was masala red sauce and the other was a pale gold. I asked him if this was the creamy nut base for pasanda, korma etc and he said yes.

He had 1 tub of ginger/garlic paste and 1 tub of just garlic paste, he also said they used the garlic flakes you can buy in the asian grocers but only for certain dishes like lamb garlic, tarka dhall etc

The pre fried onions had red bits in, I guess that was tomato.


He made a big thing about the 'stock' being the secret to any indian restaurant, I told him we had loads of different recipes for it and asked him for a sample which he gave me. It looks quite brown but on tasting it is very bland, there is the hint of spice and maybe a hint of carrot in it. Compared to our bases I would say it is more bland, more salty and a little sweet.

I cooked with this base and did a vindaloo with basaar mix, unfortunately I got the proportion of base and spice wrong and made a pigs ear of it, ah well (unfamiliar recipe)

Its fair to say this is one the most popular spice mixes on the site, if you see a call for spice mix, restaurant masala or anything of that nature you can use this.

Welcome aboard mate

I used a knorr vegetable stock cube in a base last weekend, I didnt add any extra salt as there turned out to be almost 1TSP of salt in the cube.