Hi TwoBadMice, welcome to cr0!

Your basic CTM needs a deal of preparation, this will take time at the start as you will need to create a base sauce (for a proper restaurant curry). But after that, the process should go pretty quickly.

CTM is an easy curry to create but it will take time, if its done properly. I presume you will use Chicken for your "tikka masala" which you will need to marinade in the fridge for a while (24hrs is optimal) but 30 mins is absolute minimum i would suggest.

A quicker version if you dont want to go to the trouble of skewering the meat would be to fry the chicken directly in the frying pan. You could follow an authentic recipe for basic a chicken curry, onions, garlic and ginger and add the curry spice mix and CTM spices, some almonds and extra tomato-pasata , lick of cream and some fresh coriander.

An authentic curry would probably save you alot of time, remember you will probably want to make some rice (basmati) to go with it . You could always buy some nan or other breads from the supermarket if you havent the time to make your own.

If you are interested in making a restaurant curry then take some time out and make up a few liters of base sauce which you can freeze in individual cartons.. your basic curry shouldnt take longer than it takes to cook the rice then but the base sauce should take you over an hour to chop up the ingrediences, boil them and puree them.

A good starting base sauce is something like Kris Dhillions for the beginner, its very simple to make but it does stink the place out and it doesnt have the depth of flavour some of the other curry sauces have on this site.

I have heard some good things about Curry Kings CTM if you want a "proper" curry but there are plenty to choose from!!

Good Luck! Remember a long journey starts with the first onion! Old chinese saying (unquote) 

Ashes

Damn you guys are quick, 2 posts before i got this one off S;

CP!

- Illegitimi Non Carborundum 

CP youve got the makings of a good idea there, although i suspect that there isnt much Mark could teach us about curry making "BIR styley", after all we have a wealth of info on  these very pages.

Its BIR that most of us are interested in,  there are tips and techniques that professional chefs use that we could learn from. Thats what im most interested in! If you have a beta version id be interested in giving it my honest opinion. I hope the video shows not only what spices Mark will use, and what order he will add them, and WHY. Technique technique technique

Besides whats been said, there are people out there on e-bay who dont know s..t about curry making, but are willing to try, so i hope the video will cater for all, beginner and prof alike.

Regards Ashes

Yep, all the best places are in that part of the world  ;D

Ashes

Stop being such a wet blanket Yellow Fingers.. 

Im sure you have your own bonfire to piss on  :-X

Kind regards Ashes 

Hi Brummie! Welcome!

Where is the best balti is brum? This summer i was visiting the Royal Naim on the stratford road and it was really tasty https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=1093.0
Wondering if you know of any that are as good/better.

I only get over to brum once a year, so i try to make it worth while when im there.

Regards Ashes

Thats an excellent question Cory, and a hard one to answer. Weve talked about this several times and didnt Darth recently write a list of things we pretty much agreed with, cant find the thread.

We are all pretty sure having a professional gas cooker helps, although Darth said hes got close with the  oven method. The order in which you add the ingrediences/spices some ppl think is important, especially as those who have seen a BIR curry made and it makes sense to copy their techniques if you are trying to replicate their flavours. Also how the base sauce is made, frying the onions or raw onions bases could also be said to be a technique.

Pete and Ray (and others) used to write long threads about their attempts to recreate the flavour. Id suggest you check those out.

Regards A

Just checked some old threads out and there is a wealth of information that somehow?s got lost over time..
Anyway heres something more recent
https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=723.msg7133#msg7133

Yellow Fingers

Anyone who is seriously into the restaurant style curry making should relish trawling through this forum

With respect thats rediculous! Trawling through 2 yrs worth of posts can be tiresome and time consuming. if youre looking for a specific piece of information it would be better to have it to hand. 2 years of information now, soon 3 years .....

I never suggested any of the information is uncopyable. anyone with one eye and a ballpoint can copy! :

"In my opinion it would also be a very bad idea to neatly package up the two years' worth of curry making effort that has gone into this site by tens of contributing members, and freely distribute it to all and sundry."

Why? This site is the culmination of that effort. Free of charge too to "all and sundry".
Youre not worried some undesirables might get hold of the recipes surely?

If you search the net youll find that several sites have compiled information, e-books, recipes and software. There are indeed files available on this very site. This isnt some kind of radicle new idea, its what people have been doing since the beginning of the internet.

As far as i know swf files are not editable or atleast you need a special program to convert them. If someone is going to go to the effort of ripping off this site then its going to be very difficult to stop them, unless you create a closed site, but doesnt that defeat the object?

Given the amount of information on this site, i think it would be a very good idea to compile the information. We arent trying to keep this site a secret, like you said there are "10?s" of people who have contributed, wouldnt it better if it were 100?s?

Im sure Stew would enjoy the extra clicks and who knows maybe someone will one day arrive and tell us the "curry secret".  ;D. Creating an information file (e-book) which is freely distributed is free advertising, this site could easily be the biggest curry site on the internet, maybe in a few years time Stew ends up selling it to Google

Like i said, it was just a thought, trying to think bigger, id rather see this site grow and expand than to become an elitist corner.

Regards Ashes

How about someone creates a PDF file that could be downloaded which contains the recipes, ideas and techniques we have on cr0. This could make it alot easier for members and non members to print out recipes without having to print out all the comments and chat that generally goes with recipe threads. Also this file could be  freely avaiable on file sharing networks, homepages ect

This could also make cr0 better known and bring in more members.

A PDF file isnt editable (i think, or another non editable file) as opposed to a word document which is. This would in effect contain a copyright statement + disclaimer, a link to cr0 and some of the best recipes we have.

It could even contain photos to each recipe and/or step by step photos and techniques which would help newbies create the BIR dishes. Basically a free e-book which could be used as a reference guide for everyones enjoyment.

The advantage is, that if a free e-book was available it would help prevent people copying recipes and selling them, (which they can do anyway) if its free why pay for it?. The book could be downloadable from  any of our members own sites (free of charge), torrent and a host of other sharing programs. This would make our site better known to the wider community. Im not suggesting all recipes should be included, and of course each persons recipe would/could only be published with their permission.But as this site gets bigger and bigger and more information is exchanged there could be a need to distill the  essense and share it with other curry enthusiasts who havent discovered us yet.

Also it would make a backup copy of recipes. This might be one solution to stop people making cash off the work we have put in for cr0. For me the spirit of cr0 is the freely sharing of information, ideas and recipes, a mini community dedicated to recreating our favourite BIR food.

Just a thought.

Ashes

I have no idea whether this book contains anything we dont already use, i would guess it contains their own spice mixtures they use in their restaurants or it could be just a collection of trad recipes. I have no idea. But for 2 quid its not going to break the bank.

regards ashes