Best of Luck Aussie Mick - and keep us all here posted on the regular!

Naan bread with neither baking powder or yeast... sounds interesting! Post that too when you have a sec!

Cheers,
Josh

It would have to be a tandoor...

In a Bengali BIR, theres an old school way of boiling the Chicken,
plus a more modern "Handi Cook" method, involving a Bhagar and whole Garam spices.

You rarely get that boiled background taste with the Handi method. Plus it's moist and tender.

Chewy - can you elaborate on this method? Getting fork tender chicken is an area I could definitely improve on...

I've found ifindforu's to be the most "BIR authentic" in taste and aroma, using whole bengali spices, but I feel his method overcooks the chicken, as I can't get it very tender his way.

Thanks,
Josh

Don't know if it works the same in the UK, but over here "Chilli Powder" is the ground chillies, and "Chili Powder" (one L) is the mix type. Its usually easy to tell by the colour. Chilli is red, chill is much darker in colour.

After eating at well over a hundred curry restaurants across Canada and the US, I thought I'd post this as "typical" for anyone who travels over here and wants a curry.



Clockwise from top right:

Chicken Tikka Masala - notice the capsicum and onion chunks. Robustly spiced, this bears little resemblance at all to BIR CTM. No sweetness, no cream, no coconut. Its more like a cross between a BIR Jalfrezi and Curryhell's North Indian Special. The chicken tikka is mostly similar to BIR though.

Pilau Rice - almost always with cumin seeds (and often way too many) this one has peas. Colourings other than turmeric aren't all that common.

King Prawn Korma - it may look like a BIR korma, but its not. Not even slightly sweet, it is a mild dish with either almond or cashew powder and cream. The absence of a sweetener and coconut makes it a very different dish to BIR. The "standard" starter curry for the less adventurous tends to be Butter Chicken.

Chicken Madras - at first glance, it could be a BIR Madras, but again, not even close. Notice the curry leaves and mustard seeds. In addition, this dish has coconut. Its actually quite a tasty curry, but I can't think of any BIR dish that I'd equate it with. I usually order it "as hot as you can make it" in order to get it close to BIR Madras heat. Only a Vindaloo over here is what I would classify as a hot(ter) curry.

The curries themselves are almost always made with a base gravy, but are more heavily spiced than BIR, but with much less chilli across the board.

The net of it is, there's some decent curry houses out there - but if you're looking for BIR you will most definitely be out of luck.

-- Josh