There's a few BIR near me that use aniseed/fennel in their madras. Depends what you've experienced. I like the addition and have known it being used since the 90s but wouldn't say it's essential or part of a classic nationwide madras. Some do some don't and I use it on and off and still get the lovely cooked BIR madras flavour without.

Fenugreek powder is another nice addition, I think it adds a certain smell and smokey flavour of BIR in general and I also use leaves mostly. In my mix powder I use kashmiri powder.

With aniseed I just use the hard spice in the ally pan and remove it at the end. I've tried aniseed ground bought in a packet to save me the time of grinding it but the flavour gets very diluted even with a lot in so one or two star aniseed whole do a better job. You could also bias your spiced oil with aniseed/fennel.

Madras is my fav and it's pretty basic hot but tasty curry really with room to put your own distinguishing note on it, some like lemon, lots of coriander, aniseed background and so on.

After 8-10 years I've got a consistent BIR flavour coming through even with just a standard madras mix power. I've been down the road of trying this and that many times in the early days.

Cheers curryhell. I thought that maybe the case.

The appearance is the same to me when I've experimented with a little coconut milk and more turmeric than I normally do. Gets a bit orangey and milky. Tasted decent though.

Things like coconut, larger amounts of turmeric and use of full tins of tomatoes which you see on other bases posted is not something I suspect is common in a curry base where I live though.

I've just cut more into the coconut block to see how much more yellow there is and it does look to be one third white and two thirds yellow or off white.

The store just has the KTC blocks on the shelf, no refrigeration. best before is 2016. Question would be do some of you have these blocks without separation or just didn't notice? Are two thirds for the bin or do we need to add a bit of the solidified oil?

I use the chicken breast from Farm Foods - 3 x 1kg bags for a tenner (?3.33 per kilo)! The chicken has added water content and tastes very slightly salty, so they must be processing it in a brine solution. It's perfectly fine for curry. I tried the Morrisons' cheap equivalent to this a while back and it was rank by comparison.

The morrisons near me is pretty rank for chicken, also looks and feels a little harder as if its been stood in open air longer, kind of a plasticy feel.

Aldi I've found is best of the supermarkets for chicken.

Also Morrisons, Tesco, Asda are a bit pricey on too many things. I would urge people check out Aldi or look for some asian shops. Even stuff like chillies or flour has a huge mark up at these three stores. more bemusing is many poor people go to these shops.

packs of bird eye chillies are getting pricey and you get less in a pack that I don't even by these at the main stores on a whim anymore. I can get the equilavnt of 4x 1 quid packets worth for 30-40p at the asian store.

Since I do a lot of curries a week I always get 20KG bags of rice. I save over a tenner plus its much better rice. With the cost of chillies and many other things it runs into hundreds of pounds saved a year.

Well, not much has changed, still to seek out some some pans for a pan style pizza. Also need to source a decent mozzarella block that's grateable. Still using the ball of mozz in a watery bag. Not bad and much better than supermarket grated mozz.

Anways, thought I'd add a pic of one of my recent efforts.


Only thing I'm trying is adding bird eye chillis and chilli powder to the sauce. not authentic to the more serious guys but it really hits the spot.

on a side note
Curries/base making still going strong. I'm a Madras Head, and have 3/4 a week.