Almost Home

Pictured, mes amis, the closest I've ever got to my Holy Grail Madras curry at home: an absolute stonker, if I say so myself. This is the best curry I've made in my forty-six year culinary learning curve to date. I'm starting to understand. This is so Zen it's perfect: the realisation that no particular written recipe by however good a cook will allow you entry into the realms of food nirvana. Certain precepts, largely unspoken and often kept hidden, obtain here. I've cooked some pretty decent nosh over the years, but I've never really been satisfied with my take on South Asian cooking - one mutton biriani aside - until ths evening. I've always recognised the need for patience and taking one's time over preparing food, but have never applied this rigorously enough to achieve the taste result lurking in the back of my food memory [a vast store of taste]: until tonight. Thanks to much experiment, research and time, I'm almost there at the point when I can say that I can pretty much cook a decent curry. However, there's still room for improvement: tempus may fugit, but the [curry] grail quest continues...