How is the flavour of these naans? I've seen some comments they're too sweet, which deterred me from trying, but perhaps I should try the basic technique with an adjusted recipe (less sugar), or do those who've made them recently feel the taste was ok .?

I would never fry onions to make a base. First boil (onions and water) then add some spices and additional veg and boil again. Then blend and simmer gently till the oil rises. It's a fairly generic sequence which shows up time and again in the more modern base recipes.

Suggest the OP gets himself a better base recipe to follow (eg chewytikka) as it sounds like he's way off at the moment.

Well I'm sure Chewy is going to appreciate being told to learn from C2Go...!

Stand back and wait for the fireworks...

Quote from: michael.t on January 01, 2014, 02:36 PM
I think your right there NJ about frozen curries we make seemed to taste better
And echo those reason you suggested
I bet your glad that days over  ;D

Bad luck SL buy some chips and dip it in 

ooh my head anyone got a good cure

You know what, it was quite fun actually. Maybe I was a squirrel in a former life as I seem to have a hoarding instinct and love to batch cook for the freezer. I do it with chilli con carne and lasagne meat sauce too. Can't beat getting home late from work and pulling out a portion of good tasty home cooked food to get it onto the table double quick,!

Nice effort there CH. I had my own curry fest yesterday, but slightly different approach to before. Instead of pre cooking my chicken and making base gravy to freeze into portions, I batch cooked a whole load of curries from scatch and portioned them up for the freezer. So that means 4kg of chicken breast was cooked to the IFFU method, then about 7 litres of base gravy, then straight into cooking double portions of curry eight times. I was juggling two curry pans, each 26" with double portions on the go and I did this until I used up all my chicken and nearly all the base gravy - 16 curries in all.

All served up straight into takeaway tubs and into the fridge overnight and today they're into the freezer. The mess created around the cooker was biblical in proportions but I'm thinking I now have 2 months supply of curries I can microwave straight from the freezer (based on my current fairly conservative rate of consumption) and I only have to do the washing up once,  and clean the kitchen once as opposed to 16 times. Downside is I spent about 7 hours yesterday cooking, but I'm thinking there are economies of scale at play here.

Sadly no photos or video. I did try to rig a camera but couldn't get a decent angle on the cooker and given the ridiculous amount of spluttering going on I would've been ashamed to post a video of such a dirty cooker anyway. For the record I cooked 4 Roshneys (Zaal of course), 6 Ceylon (my own), 2 dopiaza (C2Go from YouTube) and 4 Jafflongs (Manzil via YouTube Leviteish) (ex hot).  Chunky onions and peppers to be added to the Jafflongs and Roshneys will be fried off fresh each time while the curries defrost in the microwave.

I've always avoided freezing complete curries because I was sure defrosting and reheating them destroyed the texture of the veggies, but have recently experimented based on good advice received elsewhere and found that as long as the bigger chunks of onion and pepper are fried fresh each time and added to the reheated curry, it works well. Furthermore the curries seem to improve from resting before consumption - maybe the oil infuses the spice flavours better, or simply your senses are clearer having not cooked from scratch on the day.

Adding up the totals of ingredient costs and cooking time and dividing by 16 I reckon I came in at around

Sorry for not making it to this, I was in two minds but in the end it was just a bit too far. Glad it went well for you.

Nice looking curry there CT. I can almost taste the intense flavours jumping off the plate. Sainsburys had turkeys at 75% off on the day after Boxing Day. Was tempted to get one to provide curry meat but refrained in the end.

Quote from: Phil [Chaa006] on December 26, 2013, 07:13 PM
If you care more about curry than you do about the plight of those in major distress as the result of the Christmastide floods, NJ, then I genuinely feel sorry for you.  Perhaps you see the ability to focus solely on curry, to the exclusion of everything else, as something positive -- something to be admired and encouraged; I am afraid that I don't.  The topic of this thread is "What do you want from Santa", to which I responded by publishing my personal wish list.  In the light of today's salutary experiences, I saw only too clearly that other's needs far outweigh mine, and I reported that here by way of acknowledging that fact.  Our own misfortunes often pale into insignificance when compared to those of others, something that we occasionally forget.

Pull the other one Phil. You're an intelligent bloke, so you can't convince me you really think this has anything whatsoever to do with flooding. You're not so stupid to have completely missed the point of my post, so I believe you're simply trying to swerve the issue.

Floods and Christmas chaos are but one example of your continuous, ongoing and relentless use of this website as your personal blog. No thread is safe. No matter how clear the topic is, you ignore it and invariably immediately divert the discussion to your choice of irrelevant off topic nonsense. People are sick of it Phil! It has zip all to do with yesterday's topic du jour (the floods) so spare us your dishonest reaction which is fooling no one, and address the point itself.

I feel sorry for you, clearly there are issues in your life which cause you to use posting here as some kind of cathartic release but the time has come to ask yourself whether it's better to say nothing than to say whatever comes into your head, even if it's nothing at all to do with the thread topic.

The way you use this site negatively impacts upon many other people who've come here for the clearly stated primary purpose of the site. I'm sick of it. Others clearly are as well and who knows between yourself and the malevolent moderator how many genuine members have been driven away.?

Phil, I'm confused. What does any of this have to do with cooking curry.? You're posting in a curry themed thread, in a curry-specific section of a specialist curry cooking web forum. Your rambling personal journal entries to which we are regularly "treated" have no place here and are most unwelcome to me, and I'd venture to say most forum users.  Why you persist in this abusive misuse of the site, even in a thread in which you've previously been upbraided for being off topic, is quite beyond me.

New technology brings with it many novel opportunities for people to self-publish their memoirs for the benefit of anyone interested in reading them. I suggest you avail yourself of such means to see whether you can channel your enthusiasm for sharing every detail of your life into producing a kindle-classic "Phil's Life, day by day". I won't be buying. Mind you, perhaps with such an outlet you could then spare us your diary entries and just make use of this website in a normal fashion, ie to contribute to the topic of curry cooking?  That would be most welcome! 

There's nothing wrong with any food in moderation. It amuses me how often people try to take a simplistic view of labelling some foods "bad" to be avoided at all costs and others "good". Just eat a balanced diet and enjoy everything in moderation !