Have you spent years of experimental home cooking trying to emulate British Indian restaurant curries?
Dave Loyden did exactly that for decades, eventually gave up, quit his day job, and invested three years working undercover in UK curryhouses. He discovered the hidden nuances, the techniques and ingredients, that made the flavours of restaurant curries so different from home cooking.
Now these secrets are yours in his new book...Dave Loyden's Undercover Curry
As a small thank you for visiting our website why dont you make Dave's Tarka Dhall. And let's substantiate the claims made on the cover of this book.
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a copy of the book?
To order a limited first edition copy, signed by Dave, simply click on the paypal
buttons below - and happy curry cooking!
UK - £15.99
Within Europe - £21.50
Rest of the world - £27.50
Prices include postage and handling costs.
Dave's Story
Dave has been a curry enthusiast for decades and after each of his very frequent British Indian restaurant meals he would get to wondering just how those marvellous flavours and aromas were obtained. With the passage of time the need to know became an obsession.
In the early days he classed himself as a good curry cook. Later, after various stints as a chef, mixed in with business interests, the general view was that he was very good, and it seemed that Dave was the only one not satisfied. He knew there was further to go, and he badly wanted to know more of what was hidden from him.
Now, there are a great many curry enthusiasts, and I suppose every one of them would like to know, as Dave did, just how do the BIR chefs get those unique flavours and aromas? What ingredients do they use? What are the techniques, the tricks and secrets – the real, carefully safeguarded secrets?
However, there’s a big difference between wanting to know them and being prepared to spend three years of your life discovering them. Yet that’s exactly what Dave Loyden did! He had the determination and the commitment needed to get a job doing deliveries for a top curry restaurant with the express purpose of searching out those secrets. After a while he started coming in early to help out with the prep. He was in the kitchen! Three years later the commitment had paid off. He had learned them, and what he found out is all laid out in his book. In a few hours you can learn what it took Dave those three years to find out.
These are the genuine secrets – there are no half- truths and nothing is held back. For example, to our certain knowledge, noone has ever before put down in print the actual ingredients the British Indian restaurants use to make the gravy (the sauce), much less reveal the cooking process.
You’ll find out that not only is it possible to replicate those BIR flavours in your own kitchen, it’s also quite easy when you know how. And you can serve them up at restaurant speed at home. You do your core preparation in advance, freeze, and then for weeks ahead meals can be on the table within 10 to 15 minutes from starting – and we’re talking about quality BIR meals.
We want you to understand that Undercover Curry is not your standard cookbook. If you want a book with pretty coloured photographs to look at, you really should go elsewhere. But if you want to share in the arcane, hard- won knowledge, passed on in the clear and inimitable Dave Loyden style, and become a British Indian Restaurant expert in the process, then this book certainly is for you. It's available from the bookstores, but by ordering it from this website, for the same price you get a copy signed by the author and delivered to your address.
After you’ve made some of the dishes, tasted the results and found out how easy it is, we’d love to hear from you. It’s one thing for us to say how good the book is, but unprejudiced third party comments count for more so check out the 'Testimomials' and find out what the curry fanatics who have bought the book think about it. We're proud of them.
Having beans on toast instead of Indian takeaway for just one night will save you the money for the book (and then the book will then save you that money back many, many times over).
Appearances
Radio and personal appearances will be listed here to allow you to listen in or catch up with Dave in person. Meet the man, have a chat, get your exclusive copy of "Undercover Curry" autographed, and have Dave solve all those troublesome curry problems that have bothered you for so long. The book signing at Waterstone's, previously announced to be held on the 31st July, has been postponed. We sincerely apolgise for this, but due to a hold-up in their ordering system, Waterstone's will not have an adequate supply of books in their Carlisle store by that time. Additionally, we have been unable to update this site in a more timely fashion as our webhost has been experiencing technical difficulties. Dave is sorting out alternative arrangements, and we will post those the moment those details are available. We just hope those of you who were going along to the signing get to read this in time. Sorry!
Click here to listen to
an exclusive BBC radio interview featuring Dave
Request Dave
Dave is open for bookings to run curry nights for your group or association. Please contact us to discuss.
Tony
A big thank you to Dave!
Alan Giles
SK
Mark Lynch
Once the major ingredients are prepared, you can cook something or even many different curries in just a few minutes (again just like a pro chef would)
Surely there is no better insight into BIR cookery, researching it the way Dave has over the 3 or so years he did so.
So all I can say, is for a very small price you can finally learn how to make curries that you will certainly be proud of & hopefully save yourself (as I have) a load of money on takeaways.
Jon L
K. Vincent
Willco
The recipes give flexibility to experiment yourself and also tailor the flavors and heat levels according to your own taste.
Congratulations Dave Loyden an excellent book and 10 out of 10 for the curries.
John Taylor
This is SPOT on !!!! If you want a curry that tastes and feels like its out of a small London curry house with red flock wallpaper and old Indian music - well this is it.
I cant explain the emotion I felt when I had the first mouthful. The tip of the way the chicken is cooked, the ingredients in the gravy (who would have thought) and the spices just hit the mark. Yep it takes a while to make a batch. I did the small quantity and it gave me enough for 4 people, but rest assured I will be buying a huge pot. Once you have made the gravy and frozen it the actual curry making takes very little time. The result is so so so so worth the effort.
This is a book for poms who are away from home. If you we are at home you would just walk down the road and have a few beers and a curry but its not that easy when its twenty four hours on a plane.
Like I say - I have tried everything and got close but I realised how far away I was when I tasted this. If you read this then it mea
ns you have searched for a decent british curry recipe book. Dont bother buying anything else.....this really is it. I have spent many years (and lots of pounds and dollars)doing the research for you
Gibbo
It is a shame that the korma curry is not included as it is very popular - I have great comments/results with the vindaloo, patia and my korma which I made up by using the book.
Recipe as follows - pre cooked chicken (I cook my chicken breasts in the microwave with a little seasoning and tiny amount of water-then cut up into chunks straight into the curry) Oil in pan-add 1 banana-sliced, (Dipping) - 1 rounded desert spoon or more ginger/garlic paste, 2 rounded teaspoon curry powder, 1 teaspoon tomato puree, good pinch fenugreek leaf, a sprinkle of cardomon and cinnamon, good pinch of demerara sugar. Then add chicken, cashew nuts and stir well, add gravy to coat and a good chunk of coconut cream block, coriander leaf and lastly just before serving add another sliced banana and stir in yoghurt or single cream. Of course add less or more of anything you wish. The book does have handy places to add your own notes, there is no index which would be handy although you soon get the hang of it, it is a very easy read and well worth reading right through before you start.
Enjoy!
Polly
A British Indian Restaurant insider exposes the actual secrets and...
- tells you the 18 standard ingredients used in BIR (British Indian Restaurant) gravy recipes
- gives you precise instructions on the techniques of the cooking process
- dispels many myths, including the critical one that you can’t reproduce those particular BIR flavours in your home kitchen
- shows how you can easily produce a BIR meal at home that matches a restaurant meal in quality and also serve it as quickly
- presents recipes in a new, user friendly layout
- openly tells you the real secrets – no misinformation, no half truths, nothing held back
...and a whole lot more. More detail and discussion is on our Table of Contents Page.
You’ll be on your feet using the techniques within the first few pages, and well before the last page you’ll be a confident BIR chef dishing up meals that are certain to satisfy you, impress others and save you a lot of money in the process. You don’t even need to be a handy cook. Mystique is often confused with difficulty, but believe us, when you know how, it’s all quite easy - and Undercover Curry tells you how.
As you will see when you first read my book, Undercover Curry is no ordinary cookbook, There are no glossy photographs and there is a good reason for that.
You will notice that there are spaces in the book for readers notes, because this book is as much about technique as it is about ingredients and their proportions.
We would if we were compiling a “normal” cookbook fill these spaces with photographs .But as I’ve said this is no ordinary cookbook and everyone has their own likes and dislikes, and their own idea as to what is the perfect curry.
Undercover Curry will teach the reader how to achieve that unique restaurant flavor but we encourage the reader to experiment and deviate from the recipe in terms of the ingredients or flavourings but to adopt the correct technique as described in the core preparation part of the book and the cooking guidelines.
Any amendments that the reader makes to the ingredients to suit his own tastes should be written in the notes section.
This would mean that each reader would be the proud owner of his own unique co authored copy of Undercover Curry.
Undercover Curry is the only publication that reveals the real secrets of the British Indian Restaurant (BIR)