I agree SS. I also noticed this in the last curry I brought to work a couple of weeks ago. Every time I bring curry for lunch, the lads at work compliment me on the smell and remark it as excellent, today they've asked me when would I make a curry party but I digress.

In any case, I made myself a bhuna today (the picture in my ipad came out rubbish) and although not as good and aromatic as my lunch (for probably the reasons SS mentions above) it was by far my best bhunao'd curry. The base seems to have a je ne sais quoi that I never got with the others and I attribute it to the yakhni stock... I'm quite happy with this base.

Quote from: vindapoo on September 19, 2013, 12:34 AM
You never see any female staff in any takeaway/restaurant.

In ireland, we have women staff behind the counters from pakistani (punjab/kashmiri) origin. I have not had very good experiences with any of them (3 cases). They must have been gone to the bathroom when god was distributing courtesy and basic people skills.

I was highly apprehensive about this base yesterday. I thought I may have added too much yakhni water, as the smell of tej patta/cassia was coming through a lot. I made a tikka jalfrezi and left it cooling overnight. Unlike yesterday, I didn't feel salt needed adjustment today (on the final dish, anyway) and just as I pull the container out of the microwaves, I got a fantastic spicing smell highly reminiscent of the curries from my reference TA in Cambridge (Meghna "exotic bangladeshi food" :) and the kind that I've always found missing in all other bases that I cooked at home. The smell of tej/cassia was not as intense either. I am absolutely stunned, I think the trick may be to play with the amount of akhni and the actual spices. Look forward to try the highly acclaimed madras with this base sauce, as it's already a staple recipe with every other base

Jalfrezi cooked with this base.

I used juice of one lime and I think I saw this on the actual video on youtube. It does not overpower, I couldn't tell the difference between this or lemon. In the whole, I think lasan results in better tikka, YMMV.

I had a quick taste and noticed the base was quite salty. We can always control the amount of salt in the
final dish, but just wanted to confirm if this correct as it took me by surprise and the final dish has a bit more salt than should, though by a small amount I believe.

Made a tikka jalfrezi which I am taking to work for lunch tomorrow. Had a few brief tasters of the sauce and a piece of tikka in the sauce and it's hard to stop from going at it.

I made this recipe tonight. I've sieved it as recommended and after watering it down, the consistency appears to be identical to that of little india's base gravy video from CBM so I'm happy with it.

As I was unsure the spice ball would hold with the pressure, I opted for a separate yakhni stock, using a variation of the whole garam masala  that chewy shared above (i.e 1 black card and 3 cloves only) and then strain the water through a sieve and I used that water for (1) watering down a 140g can of tom puree and to do the base. The proof is in the pudding... I'll report later...

I used the tandoori curry paste. Interesting that you mention chaat masala on tikkas, as this recipe calls for black salt as well, which is one of the "highly distinctive" smells in the chaat masala. I'll try it next time

That is looking very appetising GA. Good job... I could do with some of that

safe to say, I hate you for making me this hungry, even though I have a tikka madras (your recipe) in the office's fridge waiting, I so wish I could have a proper shatkora curry right now

I've made a small variation of this recipe along with Blade's (where I used balti paste instead of tandoori). The lasan came up as the clear winner (although I didn't make them to compare, it's just that I was not really happy with any of the previous recipes I tried, which didn't remind me of my TAs at all -- although they were good); I didn't use black salt or white pepper as I couldn't source black salt and forgot to buy white pepper. The results seem more similar to that I used to get when ordering.

For this recipe, I used PC's tandoori masala, which seems to be one of the few PC masalas worth writing down.