Hi Cory, where'd you get the mint jelly?  I've got mint sauce, and also apple&mint jelly, but not seen any mint jelly without the apple!

I'm salivating just looking at those pix!!

I can't wait to hear more on this topic!

Any idea what curry-powder they use to make up this mix?

My last batch of curry base was KD, with chix stock, as I normally do, but I also added a couple of carrots and a pepper, the carrots made the base very obviously 'carroty' and heavy, I shant be using carrot again.  I read else where on Cr0 that making a basic KD base but with a slice of lemon and some celery worked well.  I have a 'gut feeling' that that would be very good as celery has a way of enhancing other flavours, so can'r wait to try it!

Thanks guys!

Apart from quantities of ingredients, I believe that BIR style food is VERY technique critical, in terms of temp/time, and ratin of oils to aqueous (watery) componant.

Several contributers, including me, have mentioned a 'two stage' addition of base sauce in the final preparation of a dish, I really think it works.

I quite agree with Cory!

At the risk of seeming a bit 'anal'' I always try to use exact, reproducible quantities of ingredients  (e.g. a lev 15ml tbs of this, or lev 5tps of that).  Spices have strong flavours and using slighty different amounts each time can give a huge variation in result. BIR chefs don't need to as they do it every day and have have stacks of experience, THEY can get away with that approach, they know exactly what they are doing.  I have to be more carefull!

I also make a note of exactly what changes I make to a dish, untill I get the result I want.  If I'm feeding others I never 'wing-it' or make spur-of-the-moment changes because it can often backfire!

I'm just such a fuss-pot I know!!

Hi Haldi.

Your chef did things in a similar way to the chef I watched in what used to be the Gatwick Tanoori. i.e. the addition of oil, spices (& sugar, in my case), to A SMALL initial quantity of base; then after the flavour of the spice has been extracted by the hot all, he added the remaining base and other ingredients.

I believe this technique is critical to getting the BIR taste!  I've tried adding all the base first, the flavour does not develope correctly and texture ends up more gritty.

I believe that what happens is that the hot oil is in relative excess initially, which allows the oil to properly extract the (lipid soluble) flavours from the spice mix.  The small amount of base prevents the spice burning, because as long as water remains boiling away in the base, the pan will not get hotter than 100 C!  So in effect the initail addition of base just prevents the spice burning.  I have read elsewhere on Cr0 that one contributer has seen oil AND water heated TOGETHER before the addition of spice (he even admitted that it seemed odd to to this!) - same reason!!

Whenever I use a 'curry-powder' such as the Bruce Edward's one, I ALWAYS adopt this method.  The only time I do not do this is when adding cummin or garam masalla, which goes in near the end of the cooking time.

I must say, I think this site is great, I never realized that there were so many like-minded people out there!

Many thanks for posting your Garam Masalla, I use the Dhillon one in my version of Bhuna and Jalfrezi, and it works well (incidently my 'finished dish' curry's differ markedly from Dhillon's, If find her base recipe very good but her  finished dishes a little bland!

My base is the same as Dhillon's, save it contains home made chicken stock, and from time to time I've tried adding carrot (not a fan, the finished base would, with the addition of some chopped Corriander leaf, made a superb carrot & corriander soup!) and green pepper (one or two medium carrots and one pepper to every 9 or so large omions).  I include black peeper corns, bay, star anise and cloves in this stock; and suble amounts of these spices (hardly noticable in their own right) seem to 'lift' the over all flavours of the dishes eventually made from the base.

So, I was very interested to read your recipe for garam masalla, which contains star anise, as I fully appreciate just how well small amounts of this flavour compliment a curry.  Interestingly, some of the best BIR currys I've ever had contain 'just detectable' levels of anise.

Many thanks can't wait to try out your version!