Yeah, I'm turning into a proper curry anorak. I'll give me guts a chance to recover, and will be back in there.

Has anyone tried that restaurant spice mix that Bruce Edwards recommends?

A8

Since my last post I've made two Madrases.

With the first, I used a spice paste as suggested above. This tasted OK, but could have been better. With the second one, I fried a few onions, then a bit of puree and then threw the spices in, frying them for no more than 20 seconds. I'm sure the onion helps to deffuse the heat - Bruce Edwards uses a pepper which, I guess, does much the same thing.

Because things are very much at the experimental stage, the spice mixes weren't the same, but the second curry was a real corker.

Wearing my white scientist's coat and clever spectacles, and holding a clipboard, my observations were:

1The oil in the second curry was bright red (could have been the puree) and when I tasted the oil on its own it was very spicey.

2 The second curry tasted by far the better.

3 Garlic powder seems the way to go with a Madras - it seems to bring the garlic flavour to the foreground in a way that the fresh stuff can't

I deduced that:

1 If I skimmed the oil off, then I'd also be skimming off most of the spice flavour.

2 Perhaps the KD recipe has been adapted to make it easier - the spices are cooked in the initial 2 minute full-bore blast.

3 I wondered about the presence of the tomato puree - It can be overpowering, even in small amounts and it has that boiled tasted that I'm trying to get away from. Has anyone ever tried using condensed tomato soup!

4 Eating lots of curries can give you a sore arse.

As you can see, I'm flying by the seat of my pants here, but having fun!

A8

They can't be on brilliant wages and most people hate their boss it's possible he could be bribed. Perhaps we should have a kitty for such purposes.

A8

Has anyone tried using powdered ginger and garlic in the base, in place of the fresh stuff. This must be a common shortcut in the trade.

I used some powdered garlic to rescue a madras and it ended up tasting very pleasant.

After8

This is a Fab site, and I thank you all for the advice.

The next Madras I make (which is my sort of benchmark curry) I'll fry the cumin, chili and coriander in a paste, then will add the tomato puree. The garam masala can go in when I turn the heat down after the intital 2 minute blast on the base sauce, before finishing off with fenegreek at the end.

It's interesting (and confusing) to note that the same spice can indirectly go into a curry a number of times - garam masala has coriander, cumin and ginger in it and curry powder contains coriander  turmeric, cumin, garlic and fenegreek. These all seem to crop up an their own in most curries.

By the way, I'm afraid got a bit big headed the other day and I've invited the whole family round for Indian food.  The only way I can handel it is to pick the dishes off one by one, and freeze them. I'll do the naans on the day.

After8

Hell Me again,

Just made two curries lats night - one Madras and one korma. I more or less follwed the KD spice recommendations, but added creamed coconut to the korma. It was by far the best of the two, not too sweet. I skimped on the oil with the madras and I think that may have made a difference.

The spices in the Kris Dillon recipes are just lobbed into the sauce, as opposed to frying them in oil first, and I wonder if this makes a difference. I've always been happy to avoid frying them first, as I don't want to burn them and spoil the dish. Bruce Edwards says fry them first, but there always seems to be a pepper in there which may absorb some of the heat. This doesn't seem rigth, especially for a smooth Madras.

Be interested to hear your thoughts. If frying them is best, then perhaps there is somewhere on the site that tells you how to do this without burning them.

Will do, but it'll be a while before I'm over that way.

The chilli (and the other stuff) is Rajah, and it's red. My small tin of Rajah chilli doesn't specify the heat. I think the curry powder was mild madras though.

A8

See what you make of this:

I was up the west end of Newcastle today, which is where the shops are that supply the Indian restaurants. In the shop I visited, the spices were available in a variety of sizes, the, the biggest being huge 5KG sacks.

The only spices available in this large size were: coriander; chill; cumin; currypower (madras) and that was it.

This must give us a good idea of what's being used by the trade. A five KG bag is massive, probably about 3/4 of the size of a pillow. That's a lot of chilli man!

Well, I got some mooli, boiler it for absolutely ages, sniffed it, tasted it, and then chucked it in the bin. It smells a bit like broccoli and tastes sligthly bitter.

There's one off the list.

After8

Hi Cory,

I copied the spice mix and some other veggie ingredients from Darth's base, so the celery's in there. It's already a really nice base, but it'll be a while before I get to use it as I'm flat out with work. Ironically, when I was knocking it up, I had to get a fix from a couple of tesco's ping meal currys, which were not on with mine.

Will let you know the result whihc will be significant either way.

After8