You want to reduce your level of flatulence ?  Be like your son, enjoy it and take pride in it !  (I had a friend who used to joke (or perhaps not) that whenever he farted in bed, he would shout "burglars" and pull the duvet over his wife's face !).

Quote from: haldi on October 15, 2010, 06:38 PM
I found quite a few things in the Undecover book which didn't seem to ring quite true.
The author seemed reluctant to reply to several emails.

I've found him (Dave Loyden, that is) extremely helpful so far : I reported non-delivery ten days after order, he sent two follow-up messages, a third when I said I would let him know once it had arrived, and the book itself arrived recorded delivery this morning despite being post-free.  Not yet had time to do more than look at the design, so will report back once I've started to read it and perhaps when I've tried one or two recipes.

"Nasty light brown" doesn't sound right for a vindaloo.  A few basic questions : what colour are your ground chillies ?  Does your sauce include both paprika and tomato ?  Is it possible that you are adding too much garam masala just before serving ?  Looking at KD's prawn curry, if you are following it to the letter and not increasing the amount of chilli powder as she suggests in paragraph 2, then the chilli will be swamped by the coriander and garam masala which could explain the colour.

Hmm, 'fraid that Tamil is not one of my languages, so I can't comment on the garab/grabbi connection, but after a lot more searching I can find only two other references to "grabbi" on the context of curry gravy.  One is a plea to Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi to demonstrate how to make grabbi/gravy on his television programme, and the other is an observation from someone who was allowed into an Indian restaurant kitchen :

"My most embarrassing moment was when I asked a chef why he had two grabbis/gravies on the go. He shouted "One grabbi - just made from onion" and gave up on me as a complete idiot. Which is what I felt when he finished the dish and dumped his chef's spoon in the "other gravy" pan ready for the washer-upper. (It did look quite tasty though.)"

Quote from: jimmy2x on October 15, 2010, 04:41 PM
so does anywhere sell this pasco stuff online?

Pasco do give an e-mail address for sales : sales@pascospices.co.uk but the site doesn't mention retail, I am afraid.  Ocado list some of their products, as do Tesco.

Quote from: ThaiExpat on October 15, 2010, 03:59 PM
58 pages including photos does seem short but as long as he gives us the menu favourites that most punters go for then that's all I need

Having just finished editing the PDF mentioned at https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=4644.msg48897#msg48897, even 58pp may be overkill if there is as much repetition as there is in the PDF !  It seems to me that rather than listing individual recipes for (say) Chicken Vindaloo, Meat Vindaloo, King Prawn Vindaloo and so on, all that is really needed is to give a recipe for generic Vindaloo and explain in the preface how to tailor the recipes for different main ingredients.  And this could then be taken one step further by giving a generic recipe for a whole family of curries (Madras, Vindaloo, and so on) and then documenting the differences.  Of course some recipes are unique, and would need individual treatment, but there is a great deal of commonality that could easily be factored out if the author were so inclined (and if his/her publishers would allow him/her to do so !).

No !  I wrote "until I purchased my first copy of her "The Curry Secret" I remained as far from achieving the authentic taste of BIR food as it is possible to be", where the key word was "until".  Not sure how this was misunderstood ...

Confused !  What edit do you suggest (should I clarify that this is the base sauce that is being called "grabbi" rather than the finished sauce, or is there something else that could be improved ?).  Always open to constructive criticism 

Quote from: Axe on October 15, 2010, 12:32 PMI did however try making a Pilau Rice with it in place of adding star anise and choose to keep the seed in the rice. It turned out very well indeed.

Yes, that was exactly the context in which I was thinking of trying it : it was my (Chinese/Vietnamese) wife who first identified that it was the anise element that was lacking in my pillau rice, and of course she suggested star anise with which she was already familiar.  I shall order some real aniseed "secretly" and surprise her !

Quote from: George on October 15, 2010, 12:09 PM
This is interesting. But why do you leave out the Kushi Balti Cookbook (Haydor) and the recent Undercover Curry book? Do you really rate Dhillon higher?

I can't answer for Haldi, but I have ordered a copy of the "Undercover" book yet would steer clear of any book with Balti in its title on the (perhaps unreasonable) basis that I am unconvinced that Balti really brought anything worthwhile to BIR cuisine (rather like CTM, in fact !).  But I also rate KD very highly, mainly because she is the one who took the cork out of the bottle; without Kris's lead, how many of these later books would have been published, I wonder ?  And I also owe her an eternal debt of gratitude, since until I purchased my first copy of her "The Curry Secret" I remained as far from achieving the authentic taste of BIR food as it is possible to be !