Hi all, i am still a bit of a rookie with this technique business, maybe one of you pro's can help. Below are my steps.
1) heat plenty of oil to near max temp, then add chopped onion + ginger garlic paste and fry until brown. (2)Then, add spice mix, salt, tumeric, and chilly powder and a little base to stop burning, and fry for 2 mins. My question here is this: What smells should i be getting at what stage, and what signs should i be looking for before i add the remaining 4 ladles of base. Should i be adding extra spice mix and chilly powder at the initial frying stage to increase this toffee smell you guys talk off? The only smell i notice is an initial blast when i first add the spice mix and chilly powder for 10 seconds. once i start adding base this smell never returns. Is the key to an amazing curry, getting this toffee smell repeating during the whole cooking process? Hope this isn't too confusing! unfortunately its hard to describe on a web page! Cheers DD. look forward to your replies

After a recent BIR demo i noticed swartz garam masalla spice mix jars in the kitchen of my local BIR. I purchased the same garam masalla spice mix from tescos on saturday, and added a tbs to my rogan josh during the final 5 mins of cooking. Lets just say the final result was crap! it clashed big time with the CR0 spice mix i had already added to the dish in the early stages. Clearly the 2 spice mixes dont work well together. Basically i would be interested to hear how i should use garam masalla. specifically, which recipes it is suitable for, and at what stage of cooking do you add it? and what quantity should i use per portion. I am sure one of you curry kings or queens will have trodden this path before, and can gleam some light on the matter. cheers DD 

In a brief demo i had at a BIR, the cook said they use pataks kashmiri masalla paste in the balti dish only. I think the chicken is also pre marinated in tumeric and lemon, as it looked very yellow. I am going to try these techniques soon with my usual madras recipe and see if it tastes like a balti from my local BIR.

Hi all, thanks for the tips and various helpful links last week. Thanks to your help, I made a very respectable madras on saturday which tasted on par with the lloyd grossman madras sauces you buy in tesco, but better! Cheers DD. 

Hi Bobby,  I was lucky enough to get a quick demo at a real BIR the other day and was suprised to see they are microwaving the rice which is pre cooked, and stored in the fridge. This obviously saves valuable time at the 6pm to 8pm slot, when they are pre occupied with making fresh nan bread and cooking the actual curries for there busy takeway service. I expect the microwave dries it slightly. I am going to write up what i observed inside the kitchen , but to be honest, its nothing thats not on this site. Whats been really bothering me, is that i copied everything to the tee, when i got home, and my madras tasted bland. I am beginning to think my electric cooker is to blame, as i witnessed the chef allowing the oil + curry base to ignite with high temp gas cooking, which might be giving things that lovely toffee taste we all crave. I think the best place for my electric cooker is the tip! 

Thanks Jerry, its good to hear you guys have finally got this recipe 'licked'. I am sure with a little help i will soon. Looks like its that time of the week to knock up another batch of curry gravy! I will be making that stuff in my sleep soon ! Cheers DD. PS, i will spell out those steps and proportions and compare with yours asap. i like the idea of that! 

Thanks for that SnS. I like the sound of the brown sugar and plum tomato juice. Thats sounds like it might fill the missing gap in the existing recipe i am using. I will try this out soon. For now, i am sticking to the saffron base as it tastes similar to a real BIR base i was lucky enough to taste last week. Strangely, the real BIR base i tasted, had a very mild chicken taste, possibly from chicken stock. I spoke to the main cook, and he said some restaurants use chicken soup in there base. He did not indicate if he used it himself, i suspect not. However, he did say he used lots and lots of onions, and some carrot. Compared to the KD base, infunduro base, and the 15 garlic base, featured on this site, i would say the safron base is the closest base this site has to the BIR base i tasted last week. The real BIR base did not taste nice on its own. But resulted in great curries anyway!

I am trying to find decent pastes, and spice mixes (not fecking pataks!), cheers DD 

Hi guys and gals, i am looking for tips from any serious curryheads on what to do to improve my rather bland madras. I am using the saffron base (which tastes very similar to the base used at my excellent local BIR). I am using the typical ingredients below:
1) spice mix (the usual !)
2) chilly powder
3) garlic ginger puree (watered down)
4) tomato puree
5) small amount of lemon juice
6) additional tumeric powder (this idea was from a demo at local BIR)
7) half chopped onion + a little chopped green pepper
lots of salt.
This is same technique seen at BIR demo, however it tastes disappointing. Can anyone suggest how to get rid of the bland flavour. I have tried different quantities of the above ingredients but it still lacks something. Any help would be massivly appriciated. Cheers DD.

Hi all, I finally found out how to use yogurt without it curdling. it seems you need to reduce the heat in the frying pan right down low before adding the yogurt. then keep the heat low for the remaining cooking time. also add the yogurt towards the end to avoid it evaporating. I ended up with my best rogan josh yet, loaded with green and black cardomans for tons of flavour !