thats great news josh, especially as there are no bir near where you live! which madras recipe do you use, and which base is your favorite? 

Hi, glad i am not the only person getting this issue. and yes CK i do heat the base, i believe that is really important. It only happens 1 in 3 curries so i am sure i will eventually work out what is to blame. i made a new custom base last night with no tomato, 1 bulb garlic, 6 onions instead of 13!. and double the normal amount of water. and double amount of green pepper (3). it tasted very promising, and murkey green color,  with tumeric, paprika, cumin as main spice. also a very thin base. i cant wait to try it on a madras tonight. have a great weekend , laters

i have tried many bases from this site and ever since purchasing my locals base i just have no enthusiasm for safron base or any base on this site. the real bir base was a million miles away from any on this site. i am desperatly trying to reproduce their base but with no joy (as yet). I know this sounds extreme and i could be making a big mistake not sticking to the safron base! i made some good curries with the safron base, especially korma. but something felt wrong with it? anyone else think this?  so what is the best base recipe for madras?

I would describe the problem as this...

1) a predominant taste of the carrot and boiled tomato and boiled onion from the base coming through in the flavor of the curry
2)  a noticeable taste of the spice mix combined with the stewed tomato and onion in the base.
3) the main taste is of spice mix and lightly spiced safron style base.Despite many other ingredients being added. 

Some weeks i avoid this taste, and produce superb curries. not sure why this is occuring. could be due to base variations, or technique variations. it occurs frequently enough to be an issue. Its my number one issue to erradicate. i have tried lots of techniques, and i believe the base is being cooked correctly. anyone getting this same problem? 

Hi, Its so hard to say what preparations are missing as i just dont know. It could be some random thing like letting a combination of spices mello, or slightly decompose in oil for a few days/weeks then cook with this oil. I am keeping an open mind. and will try some random ideas (much like haldi has). i believe random experiments with the spices + oil are darn useful. we should have a thread just to record odd experiments. and if these experiments are being endorsed on a permanent basis by the cr0 chef. It has to be the way forward to a better understanding of achieving a complex taste. our current recipies are possibly too simple. the taste needs developing, and intensifying. from cooking with my locals base i can honestly rule out the base as being any importance at all. although others may disagree! and i am sure they will  ;D. they may have been hiding some truth about their oil though. but it looked like veg oil.

Hi CA, lets face it, there must be more to this business than the basic steps /techniques  we are all performing, otherwise we would all be doing perfect bir every night. personally i feel we have yet to master new preperation methods to achieve new flavors. and a few new techniques that might be part of those preperations. i believe our conceptual schemas of cooking true bir are not very developed. thats why we miss the true bir taste. i would stress the preparation side of things more than technique. we have only really seen the tip of the iceberg. we know very little about how bir chefs prepare stuff during the afternoons. between all of us, we must be able to crack this by trial and error?

There is no turning back now Jerry !    ;D

dansak, and vindaloo, and korma are simple. however madras remains very tough. Is this because it is essentially a very low spiced simple recipe that relies heavily on the bir 'taste'.

Hi CK, its reassuring to hear someone else shares this belief. I do use spiced oil, but after reading your comments, i think i will focus more attention on the balance of spices and ingredients and technique in the future. For me, this is the way forward. Although i do also think spiced oil is a solid start for a tasty curry. But as you say, not the missing taste. We are all aiming very high. Its likely that good bir chefs are natural cooks, coming from families of chefs, that pass down secrets over many generations. so we should not be too hard on our selves ! The head bir chef at my local is 18 years old. he must have learnt to cook great bir cuisine from an elder, surely? 

I asked to buy oil, or anything they could offer, to get that taste, and they said there is nothing to sell to help with that. they said its all about preperation, technique, and a life time of erradicating certain flavors in a curry and improving the good flavors bit by bit over many years. i believe this. i have seen their oil, and it is just veg oil. i have purchased there base, and it is a very plain greenish veg stock with virtually no spice. Its a lot plainer and less spiced than safron base. cooking with their base made no improvement to my curry. it certainly had no trace of any illusive taste. although we all think we are spice gods, its bull :-X, WE ARE NOT. we are merely just at the starting gate of this quest. i am sure some bir do use flavored oil more than others. but my local bir gets the taste we are all after, and they just use veg oil.