I agree with others - great first post of your BIR culinary adventures. As someone else mentioned, Khris Dillon's book is a very good first place to start. However, her use of Garam Masala as her predominant spice mixture is a little confusing and misleading to many. Many years when I tried some of ...

Great photography - you've done fabulous job of showing off those dishes.

To be honest I don't try and reproduce specific dishes. I'm one of those infuriating people who tends to cook by instinct rather than slavishly following a specific recipe—after all recipe's are really only other people's interpretations of what a dish should be. There's no real hard and fast rules ...

Cracking the Madras is a very worthwhile achievement in my opinion—but not that easy to achieve. I put a couple of squirts of Worcestershire Sauce and Lemon juice in mine just after the tomato puree stage, I find it gives just the right amount of sourness to a Madras. Although I know there are 'Madr...

Well done on your first attempts MBC, your dishes certainly look the business and from the sounds of it taste good too. That's the most important point in my opinion—how something tastes.

No slacking now—plenty more dishes to try!

Whoops—that is a pretty big box! As CA said basically—store in a (preferably sealable) container in a cool, dark, dry place. Heat, light and moisture are the three primary degraders of all spices and herbs. Keeping them correctly will ensure a maximum shelf life. The test for freshness (or continued...

But i have never seen it in any recipes so far. Does anyone know where it could be useful? I use ground fenugreek in pretty much every single BIR style dish I cook. In my opinion it's one of the key ingredients. Virtually every single bought pre-mixed curry powder mix will have a fair amount of gro...