Thanks for the reply Chinois. Indian cooking has become a bit of an obsession since I joined this forum and started getting some good results.

I do think the spice mix can make or break a curry.

Paul.

Hi Paul,

You might be better searching for Sri Lanka rather than Ceylon as the island was renamed years ago.

e.g.

http://www.worldspice.com/blends/0344curry-srilankan.shtml

Cheers,

Paul.

Taz base is still working well for me. I might at some stage drop the amount of oil in a base preparation and cook a curry in the "traditional" way to see if it tastes any better.

Paul.

Thanks for that CoR. I was watching a few videos on Youtube last night.

What surprised me was the low amount of oil and several chefs saying not to stir too frequently. A lot of real Indian recipes call for heavily browned (but not burned) onions and it is definitely a skill to be had.

I think the pan is important too - the heavy bottomed stainless steel pans seem to be used a lot for cooking caramelized onions.

I guess onions are cheap enough to just practice with a few times without actually making a meal out of them.

Hi Emin-j,

Yes that's the book. You got a bargain for a quid!

I think I need to practise browning onions properly as my lamb shank korma wasn't anything like the photo. Nothing like a BIR korma though, it was quite sour and spicey.
The lamb shanks need 2 hours plus in a caserole dish to get the meat falling off the bones.

Paul.

I've noticed from here and other sources that for BIR style curries the spice mix usually contains proportions (in roughly descending order) of Turmeric, Corriander, Cumin, Paprika and Curry powder.

I wonder what the origin of this spice mix is. I've searched for Bangladeshi and Bengali recipes but not found anything similar.

Last weekend I made to spec the Lamb Shank Korma from the "50 Great Curries Of India" book. This has corriander powder but no cumin and no turmeric whatsoever. It does have garam masala and mace.

My wife liked the result almost as much as my BIR efforts (much to my horror) but for me using too much mace or nutmeg can result in something tasting like toothpaste or cough medicine!

I've searched through a Madhur Jaffrey book I've had for years and once again there is nothing like our BIR spice mixes to be seen, and the use of turmeric tends to be low quantities.

I just wondered whether anybody knows what the origin of our BIR spice mix is.
I'm not complaining - it works for me but just curious.

Paul.

I think you're right Jerry about the onions. When I make a bhuna/korai style curry I deep fry the onions and peppers for a few minutes and put them to one side.

Another observation is the fact that he has quite a few litres of base in a plastic container. To me this means that he never heats it up as I can't see the point of him tranferring it back to a metal pot.

Paul.

Hi Baggyray,

Personally I wouldn't eat that stuff as refined coconut oil contains hydrogenated and trans fats.

I used a batch of the expensive cold pressed organic coconut oil a while back and it cost me about 25 quid for 1.5 litres!

I can't say it made much improvement to the flavour of the curries I used it in so I now use mostly rice bran oil for my curry cooking.

Here is a link to some info about the expensive coconut oil:

http://www.coconut-connections.com/healthiest_oil.htm

Paul.

Let us remember that this is the first of April!

I watched this last night and thought it was pathetic - the sort of thing I would have cooked 25 years ago having discovered yet another make of madras sauce and thinking I might find the "secret" from a jar.

It's neither traditional Indian nor anything near BIR.

I also read his butter chicken curry recipe which has gone into print in one of his books.
The recipe states 230 ml of tomato paste. Sure enough a lot of people it seems squirted in this amount of double concentrate tom puree and found the result disgusting!

Apparently it is ok if you use pasata instead but the recipe should be clearer.

Sometimes I wonder if any of these celebrity chefs are any good.

Rant over.....

Paul.