It has been my intention for many a long year to learn to cook British Indian Restaurant curry, known as BIR recipes. But for some reason maybe it was time constraints or an inability to find a way forward in how to learn or simply we have a very good Indian restaurant, that is absolutely delicious just up the road I haven’t done so. I think the main area was that I wasn’t sure how to start and at that point did not know that BIR recipes were even a thing.

Then one day I was tootling around youtube, and Misty Ricardo’s you tube video’s came into view and I was fascinated. This was exactly what I was looking for. I spent the next few evenings looking at his videos and then purchased his recipe books Indian Restaurant Curry at Home, versions 1 and 2 by Richard Sayce so as to read and experiment further.

Firstly I gathered my spices and made a mix powder as instructed.

And then made a gravy which has a vast amount of onions in. You seem to make gallons of gravy but this is okay as it freezes very nicely.

I chose the chicken bhuna recipe as it said this was a good recipe to start with.

Initially you poach your chicken breasts in spices and then you cover them with a sauce in which they can happily remain which means they keep flavourful and moist.

Once these two stages are complete and I recommend a spare afternoon to achieve them, you can leave the curry making until required. To get the levels of flavour required you need to make single portions or scant double portion. Otherwise you won’t achieve the repeated caramelisation, followed by the addition of the gravy and repeated at least twice more to achieve the many layered flavour profile of what you enjoy at your local good Indian restaurant. If you watch the videos of Misty Ricardo he will be able to explain much better than I.

It was an absolute blast to learn this and tasted extremely authentic. Well, authentic in a British Indian Restaurant kind of way, which after all, was exactly what I was looking for. I will be using this book this month and it will be interesting to see where it takes me in my understanding of this particular cuisine.