Great post. having managed to get in my local bir kitchen 3 times now, i can offer the following advice.

1) find a bir where they are not too formal , and quite friendly, and relaxed.
2) spend lots of money over 6 months, and make some friends with the waiters.
3) let them know you are an amateur cook with a real interest in indian cooking.
4) after 6 months order a decent sized takeaway on a quiet day (e.g. mondays), and ask if you could see it being cooked. 
5) if you get this far, make friends with the chef before expecting to have all your questions answered. At this stage resist asking too much, and ruining all your hard work! keep things friendly and hopefully you might get in again.

6) dont get too serious as they will think you are opening your own rival BIR restaurant. I nearly made this mistake!

7)Dont ask basic questions such as 'whats in the spice mix', as all that info is already well documented on this site. Ask questions about things we dont know e.g does madras have just vegetable oil in it, or does it use reclaimed oil? Or ask them if madras has lemon or lime juice in it? if so how much?

8)what we really need on this site, is definate, accurate, recipies for the main bir dishes. therefore, ask questions about what ingredients are included in e.g chicken bhuna, and what quantities of things, such as garlic, spice mix are used in this dish.

9) Observe what they do,and write it down as soon as you leave the restaurant. specifically, the ingedients in each dish, and the amounts, and cooking times.
    If you find a friendly little restaurant, its quite easy to get a demo. and believe me its bloddy marvelous! the best day out i had all year! how sad, lol  ;D     
 

What do you guys think about

1) increasing amount of green pepper in base

2) increasing amount of plum toms in base

3) increasing amount of carrot in base

i am beggining to tweek my base now, and wondered what the pro's out there think is worth trying. saves me screwing up! cheers

Sounds like you really know your stuff Jerry. I learnt quite alot from time spent with traditional indian cookery a year ago. however the bir beast is much harder to tame! I will be interested to hear about your paprika experiment. 

Josh, what is chat masalla? sounds yummy 

these look great, ta.   

Hi, can some kind person advise on the best chicken tikka recipies on this site? i thought its about time i made one of these. it will make a nice change from my last few months efforts trying to crack the madras recipe. cheers DD

Ok here goes,

The spice mix, coriander 2 parts, cumin  1 part, paprika 2 parts, curry powder 3 parts (swartz), tumeric 4 parts.

Use of green chilly. 1 and a half very finely sliced birds eye small green chillies was added to the aubergine curry. this went in with the chopped onion right at start. the huge heat almost distintigrated the green chilly leaving little trace in end result , impressive!.

Bay leaf and cinemon sticks were visable in veg dishes and taka dharl. Fennel was also in jars on shelf.

I noticed two tubs full of green leaf. 1 was methi, i assume the other is chopped curry leaf.

New technique..after 5 mins of cooking chef poured boiling water over curry then evaporated this off just before serving taka dhall.

Safron base improvements... add butter(optional), no paprika, no potato. rest of recipe got thumbs up from bir chef. 

Chef spoke of yello ginger. i think he meant tumeric? do you guys agree?

Use of galic... some dishes it was sliced clove of garlic quickly browned off in first minutes of cooking, before adding anything else. Else, it was pre blended garlic paste.

Technique: 'drying out' the curry via evaporation to add the flavour. This was common in nearly all dishes.

Comments welcome, and watch this space!

Hi Stew,

I think you are right about the pan rather than wok. its on my list of things to buy next. The closer we replicate the real bir chef cooking tools, the better. The comment about the bir chef cooking style is soo true. They pump up the heat, and just blitz the whole dam thing for quite a while. Nothing like my approach so far. They definatly reduce the base a lot via evaporation (as jerry so rightly said). the bir chef actually said this is essential in many dishes to get the flavour. He called it 'drying out'. I tried a third of a tsp of astofoeda in the curry dish stage, and it was horrid. really sour. i think it clashes with garlic and ginger big time. 

its a good base for korma and probably ctm if i seem to remember. i bet it works well with the recipe that goes with it. i will try that soon. How much real tomato (not puree) do you recommend adding to the curry for eg a rogan josh or boona type affair? thats something i keep meaning to experiment with. would around 1 tsp of puree and 1 whole tom in slices be right per dish?   

My progress on the bir-ometer has been rather lacking recently, so i blagged another demo at my favourite bir last night. I really hate to say this, but the owner (who i know really well) and the chef, doubted it can be done at home. I think thats why they dont really care if i observe them at work in the kitchen. because they know, theres not much i can do without the full gas cooker set up. Both chefs thought the real gas cooker gave it that extra ummf you need for the full flavour. I came away a bit disapointed, but am still going to carry on trying to get the best results possible on my electric cooker in bir style. I will write up a few new tips i picked up during the demo, today or tommorrow. I tasted the ingredients in the tubs they use, and there is DEFINATLY no secret ingredient. its just bog standard stuff. I also showed him the safron base recipe,  and he gave it the thumbs up, with a few modifications i will post tommorrow. Cheers DD