Although not anything to do with BIR cookery, i thought it might be worthy of a quick post. Its certainly another trade secret which i would love to crack. Being a bit of an addict to all things curry or chillies. Just what goes into that bubbly vat of chilly sauce they have steaming away unobtrusively in the corner! Another of lifes little mysteries!

I hazard a guess they use black pepper, fresh cori, garlic, sugar, finely chopped onion fryed in a little ghee or oil from the onion baji cooking. Its such a simple dish I am sure it can easily be replicated, i just havent worked it out YET!. Any ideas , and i will try them out and post the results here. Cheers All 

After ordering a large takeaway from my regular last friday i drilled him on how to improve my dansaks. specifically how to get that sweetness we all crave. It is hard to understand him at times, but he said he used 'soak' or 'sote' or something very similar sounding to that. It left me very puzzeled, as i could only just understand him. He mentioned it is very very sweet and used in dansaks. I certainly have never seen this in my local indian food supplier. Any ideas on what this could be? I am still unsure if its a spice or a vegitqable or even him just kidding me! I will press him for further details next visit, and might even ask him to order me in a batch. I will post any updates asap. 

You are right the recipies from this book are not good. I believe the KD book aimed to make a quick buck, and teach a few trade secrets , such as the base. Its a shame the author did not do a better job of the main recipies section. In response to your question, i like madras, bhuna, rogan josh etc. I would be interested to know of anyone who uses that KD base alot, and any recipies they find work particularly well with that base. I find the KD base very different to cook with compared to other bases which include carrot, celery, green pepper etc. Hopefully i will discover my own recipy to use with kd base, and post it on here soon. 

The BIR owner at my finest local said he used tomatoe masala quite alot. Can someone let me know how this is made? Any ideas what dishes he might add this too? I guess it would be for things like a rogan josh or mild madras perhaps?? He also said that it takes quite a long time to learn how all the spices (which are many in number) combine together. I believe it is the way all the spices fit together in different combinations which makes each BIR dish slightly different yet amazingly tasty!!This might be wrong though! I wonder if a good BIR cook has a good knowledge of how all the ingredients combine to achieve different KEY flavours and tastes? Perhaps the longer you cook the more skilled you get at achieving that flavour in a particular dish? If anyone knows any great ingredients/recipies to go with green cardomons, cinemon, clove, tumeric, garlic,and tomatoes i would like to know. I am sure these ingredients are very important in BIR cooking but i still havent fitted them into a perfect BIR style dish yet. cheers all, look forward to the replies