Ok, this is my best spiced curry to date but it's not yet anywhere near my favourite. This was also one of the spiciest I made to date. For the bombay potatoes, I followe the curry secret's recipe.

Without further adue:

Bombay Potatoes:


Chicken Jhalfrezi

So I've made half-portion of the c2g's mix powder, including a few TBSPs of bassar mix powder, though I might not use bassar again the future. Somehow it seems to be quite a dominant spice in the mix. Reading the F.A.Q on this section, there is a basic spice mix recipe, which I quote below:

QuoteCoriander 8 Parts
Turmeric 7 Parts
Cumin 5 Parts
Curry Powder 4 parts
Paprika 4 Parts (optional)

Just to clarify, ,could parts in the text above be replaced by any type of spoon? for example, "8 tbsp coriander, 7 tbsp turmeric and so on" ?

In addition to this, does anyone have any pros and cons for the c2g spice mix?

Thanks!

that looks fantastic Stephen, and it reminds me of my favourite restaurant in Cambridge, which I've already written a recommendation in this forum, hence no repeating the name again for fear someone might think I'm associated with them. Every time I've been there, the starters was like this tantric and pleasureful ritual which wouldn't end before a second round of more of the same. Their chutneys/pickles were simply nothing short of amazing! Looking at your tea, it's made me hungry now, grr! :-)

Thanks a lot for your warm words. I'm sorry I didn't post the pictures straight to the thread and I assure this won't happen again for any future picture-worthy curries I may come to cook! I can't stress it enough, but I love the collaboration and work everyone does in this forum. I'm learning a lot from all of you and I only wish I could give back to the community somehow. Hopefully when I move from beginner to a more seasoned cook!

Hey Edwin,

The looks of that makes me hungry. Though, I'm not entirely sure I'd like anything beyond vindaloo heat-wise!

As for what was discussed for the most part, I've also been wondering what's up with the heat in my curries. I failed miserably at making garlic chicken recently and although it was quite hot, it was no where near the same type of hot as in a TA dish. It's that kind of hot that comes as an after-taste, first you get the flavour and only a split second later your throat pierced by the chili. What threads are there discussing this? I'd be keen to know more about how to spice things the TA/BIR way

Thanks CurryHell!

Just to confirm, though, is CBM's link an actual recipe or just a list of ingredients?

It doesn't say much with regards to timings, order of things, etc.

This is another dish I love and I seem to struggle getting it right.

The recipe I followed was Pat Chapman's, which I found on a thread here. As I can't seem to find it again, I'll say what I did.

1. boil 0.5kg of potatoes, with about 1tsp of turmeric and a pinch of salt for about 15mins
2. Put 4 spoons of spiced oil on a frying pan, heat it up, added a heaped tablespoon of g&g and then after it stops sizzling, I threw in a mix  composed of: 2 tsp of garam masala, 1 tsp of turmeric, 1 tsp of chili. As I add the spice, it all starts sticking and making a lot of smoke, so I start adding a bit of water until there was a thick-flowing consistency. I sort of thought I may have added too much water, but I am not sure.
3. Added 2 ladles of taz base. And later another 2 and added some coarsely chopped onions, pepper and 4 tomatoes slices.

Besides the fact that I overcooked it, the potatoes were soft on the outside and a mild bit on the inside, but the end result was that the potatoes tasted too much of turmeric or garam masala (I can't discern the spice flavours very well yet) and I remember the potatoes in the BIRs in Cambridge had more of a thick sauce consistency and a bit oily.

Does anyone see anything wrong and is there a more reliable "BIR way to bombay aloo" ?

cheers for your inputs. I assume the "onion choice" is probably a personal choice :-)

Another interesting thing to mention, is the type of onions that chefs seem to prefer, which seem contradicting. For example:

Bruce Edwards: Suggests spanish onions as being the best.
Julian Voigt: Suggests Dutch or English.

Someone else I read today (and can't seem to find again) was suggesting english onions _only_. This obviously doesn't give a very good sense of clarity over which type of onions produce the best results, if there is a huge difference between them.

So, filled with advice obtained from this thread I managed to knock another fantastic korma. My previous attempt using darthphall+CA's korma recipe was great, beyond fantastic -- but it didn't have the exact BIR taste I was hoping for. I thought I had nailed perfection then, but using a slightly different approach, I have gotten the BIR taste, so this is now the perfect korma and I am anxious to put this new base to a trial of bombay potatoes + garlic chili chicken tikka tomorrow!

Anyway, let me start by describing what I've done:

The base sauce is Taz recipe, using ground spices as kindly described by Stephen Lindsay.

The chicken was precooked. I used 6 large chicken breasts (circa 1.5kg) seasoned with salt, less than a tsp of turmeric and 4.5 TBSPs of seasoned oil (which was made 3 days ago, from cooking 17 onion bhajis using c2g mix powder with bassar curry mix). I also added a tsp of coconut flour. I don't know if that made any difference, but I hoped for extra coconut aroma in the chicken. The chicken was boiled until cooked.

For the korma, I used the recipe from c2g, and I triple the amounts of coconut and doubled the amount of ground almond, since I prefer the coconut flavour to the almond flavour. I also threw in 2 bananas sliced at the end, which I read is a kashmiri costume and as I liked it the last time, I thought I'd repeat it again.

I put all pictures in this album, since they are too heavy for a post here:

http://imgur.com/a/En5jD#7