I bought an 8" black iron pan from a chinese/asian cash n carry(Wing Yip) in birmingham for
?4.60, it's the long handle type used by the BIR's (infact maybe the souce).
I seasoned the pan following the instructions on the bag that it came in, but after testing
a few curries i think this is unnessacery because the BIR's use metal which i used too and
it scratch of the patiana that i created by seasoning the pan.

My first observations of using this pan and thinking about BIR's was they heat the dry pan
for 30 secs on high heat--- i placed my pan on the biggest of my four gas rings for 30 secs
too, then removed from the heat while i added the fresh oil and the spices(bruces mix) and
chilli and some freshly pureed tin tomatoes, what i seen was the spices and tomato simering
in the oil, i think that because it's an iron pan then as soon as you heat it up using the
flame then it retains the heat, and in case of the BIR's it retains enough heat to cook the
spices without burning them....just like how other recipes tell you how to create a spice paste.

I then placed the pan back on the high flame and added a ladle of curry gravy and simmered
for 1 min then added another ladle of sauce and left simering on high heat for 5mins, what i
noticed was that it was bubbling all the time just like BIR's that i've watched, it was
bubbling at the edges first then slowly made it inwards till the whole pan was bubbling at
which point i noticed that the oil was coming to the surface all over the pan, then i added
some fresh chopped coriander and stirred in then serverd(poored this sauce into a bowl).

This test was used on a basic madras recipe i.e curry powder and chilli and i must say that
it tasted pretty good and it had that special smell about it.
The gravy used was petes casserole dish method except that i left the oil in the sauce and i
think that was what was seperating from my madras sauce as it cooked. I also tried crating a phall sauce.
Phall on the left and Madras on the right.

Just for your info i used http://www.resize2mail.com to change my picture size as i've just only done a reinstall and am lacking editing software, but for any newbes i'd recomend using that site just to resize so you can paste a good size here.

Anyone have any BIR recipes for a slow cooker?
Is it even possible to cook a tasty BIR type of curry in a slow cooker?

Hi all, just came across a website that gives some brief info about cooking in a tandoori, thought you might all want a read of it.

http://www.thaliofindia.com/tandoori.htm

I also found a great website that sells tandoori ovens in the uk for private use for about ?260, the site also has some recipes too,

http://www.tandooriq.co.uk/