Hi Jimgif,

Glad you decided to start posting.  I think it would be interesting to hear about your experiences to date, e.g. what you found easy vs. hard, and how you got on with any of the recipes you tried.

I'm still thinking about the "improved" cr0 site we were talking about a while back (with collected recipes and extra tips extracted, verified and put into more accessible form than forum posts).  Anything you might be able to share about your own "curry journey" to date might be useful to identify the kind of things you wish you'd found quicker or things that would've just made it easier to get going.

Either way, welcome to the 'talkative' side of the forum! ;D  Look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

Cheers,

ast

Nice one Chris!

Looks like one to try.  Thanks for posting the recipe and pix. ;D

Cheers,

ast

Hi vmixture,

Welcome to cr0.  It looks like you've been pretty busy reading! ;D

Good luck with the recipes.  Hopefully the jalfrezi will turn out well for you.  One thing I'm doing now with it (having mixed up a bigger batch of the spice mix) is to use 1 tbsp of spice mix and 1 tbsp of extra hot chilli powder plus 8-10 of the fresh green finger chillies.  It turns out pretty consistent for me.

As everyone else already said, any questions, just shout.  If you make your big menu, don't forget to take pictures and let us know how they all turn out.

Happy currying! ;D

ast

Posts about AST's Jalfrezi moved by CA to here: http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,2326.0.html

Yes, I was serious as far as long term intent is concerned, even though I don't know which year it might be. I was just interested to gauge initial enthusiasm: I have, and with one or two exceptions, perhaps, present day enthusisam is close to zero! Perhaps, if I complete my DIY tandoor and take photos of mouth-watering tikkas and naans you can almost smell, coming out of it - then that might generate more interest for a site visit!

Right, so!  Off you go then!  Let's see some fancy brick work.  ;D ;D

I think I'll hold of booking the plane ticket just yet, though....

According to most of the other cookbooks I've seen, you add ground spices early in the cooking process so they have time to develop and you add dried leaves (herbs) later in the process.  If you add herbs too soon in the process, the effect is much less because they've already done their thing.  I can't imagine that including them in the frying stage of the spices would be as good as adding them later--unless you want a more subtle taste of them.

Since I add my base all at once, I generally add the methi leaves about 5 min or so before the curry's done.  That's normally about 5 min after I add the meat and turn things down to med to simmer rather than rapid boil.  I think it works pretty well for me.

I don't know what the threshold for herb intensity is.  It could be 10 min or it could be 30-45 min, depending on the heat, the freshness and, I suppose, the other flavors involved.  Would be interesting to know, though. ;D