I had a Phillips stick blender bought for me one Christmas and the attached herb chopper was fantastic for making GG paste. The herb attachment seized up after half a dozen uses and with no receipt or guarantee, I thought I was on my own.

A few months later I emailed Phillips with the serial number, who rang me back within an hour to confirm that it was indeed still under warranty and emailed me a postal slip to send it in for repair.

The same day, before I sent it back they also told me it was an old model and so replaced it with the newest upgraded model with additional attachments.

It may not be as good as a dedicated stick blender like Waring etc, but after such excellent service I would always highly recommend Phillips for their faith in their products and their faultless after sales support.

As long as they are used as per the instructions and not run for too long continuously*, then there shouldn't be a problem with a domestic blender for making curry bases and soups, if you can't stretch to a commercial one.

*Just look at the specified limits placed on the usage of a coffee grinder

In the UK, even with that setup, the best you would get is a mild sensation of warmth.

I can't help but feel that with the wording of the initial post, this thread was intended to be a thinly veiled attack on the new book proposal by H4ppy-Chris.

Maybe I'm wrong, but there recently seems to have been a curmudgeonly collective, voicing opposition to his sheer audacity for charging for the book and vids.

Yet another thread destroyed with unnecessary bile and vitriol.
A new visitor to this forum reading any number of threads full of this constant, combative, point scoring is unlikely to ever return.
It also drives away many great contributors, fed up with being attacked for each contribution they make, in common with every other forum out there that is not strictly moderated.
Thanks to Martin for providing the vids and the recipe.

That killed this thread then.

Good luck with all the work on the book Chris. I look forward to getting my grubby mitts on the finished result.

Undecided on the results I'm afraid, which probably has more to do with my cooking skills (and ingredients) than the recipe.

I have cooked the SNS base quite few times, along with CA'S and Taz's.
Each of them produced a pleasant curry smell during cooking.

This one was different and I didn't like the smell while cooking it, possibly because of the particular onions used, or the fact that they were just boiled (with vivid memories of my first KD).

I also made a few (necessary) mistakes.
I didn't have any veg ghee so I used my first ever spoonful  of butter ghee, which I found a bit overpowering with a strong rancid butter smell.

I didn't have quite enough Cassia, so I added a small stick of cinnamon as well, which seemed to add an unpleasant note to the akhni. Well, it was either the cinnamon or the Asian bay leaves, so next time I would use veg oil, cassia and European bay leaves instead, just to see if that helps

All that said, the actual taste of the base in any final dishes is quite pleasant.
It is much sweeter and smoother than my previous bases, but different, though not necessarily any better.

I am sure that more competent cooks could do much better, but this first attempt was a little underwhelming, especially given the volume of onions I had to chop up. 

Lots of frozen sauce to experiment with though.

A couple of questions to finish with. Can butter and veg ghee be used in each others place and does anyone else find the smell from butter ghee to be a bit unpleasant?

Do you get different types of Asian bay leaves, as I can't really say I've seen the benefit of using the ones I have, just that they add an "odd" note to the dishes they are used in.

Thanks for all the replies gents.
It's just reassuring to know that I'm not cooking up a huge pan of base, destined straight to the food waste.

I'm just making my first Zaal base from Solarsplaces thread. https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=8871.0

Just bought a big bag of onions from Lidl's at ?1.39 for 5 kilos, but quite a few of them were just a little bit soft with that slightly sweeter smell that accompanies.

None of them were going off or rotten, so I'm just wondering if anyone has cooked with "ripe" onions before and if it actually makes any difference to the final dish, or if I just need to ditch the lot and try again tomorrow .

Thanks in advance.

Awesome post as always Bob and really well done for landing the job in the first place.

I bet the students are thrilled with having someone on the staff who can turn out such quality Indian food as opposed to the good old Brit curry with sultana's.

So when are you going to start offering lessons?