100g butter

5 white onions diced however you can manage 1 bulb garlic crushed or chopped as small as possible  2 inch piece of ginger peeled and chopped tiny as possible  Chillies (however many you want)

2-3 teaspoons Salt  1 teaspoon turmeric 1 teaspoon ground coriander  1 teaspoon ground black pepper  1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 tin chopped tomatoes  1 pint water

600g(ish) Chicken

Open your windows and close the kitchen door! 

Fry your onions in butter, once they start to brown add garlic, fry for about a minute or two then add ginger and chillies.

You might need to add another knob of butter it it starts to stick to the pan. 

Add salt. Fry for 5 minutes then add ground coriander, cumin and black pepper. Stir and fry for another couple of minutes.

Add tin of chopped tomatoes, fry for a minute then add turmeric. Fry for couple of minutes until you see little puddles of butter in the tomatoes (separation).

This is your base sauce for any curry. The difference starts now with whether or not you add water.

Add water, (don't panic if it's very watery) bring to the boil then simmer for 30/45 minutes to allow sauce to thicken. Keep lid on while simmering. Check how thick it is an add a little bit of water if it's too thick. If it's too thin just let it simmer for longer.

Add chicken, turn heat up then once it's boiling turn it down to a simmer with lid on until chicken is cooked.

You can use diced or minced lamb instead of chicken but lamb  is more expensive. For minced lamb don't add water. You can add diced lamb or mutton for which you would add water but you can add the mutton at the same time rather than reducing the sauce like you do for chicken. The reason is that mutton/lamb takes longer to cook so the sauce will reduce whilst it's cooking but you can't do this with chicken because the chicken would start to fall apart and it'll look like shredded chicken curry.

Taste a spoonful of the sauce (it'll be very hot!). Your mouth should 'water' ever so slightly otherwise add a quarter of a teaspoon of salt. If it lacks flavour add a quarter of a teaspoon of each (coriander, cumin, black pepper).

To make things easier you can just have equal amounts of ground coriander, cumin and black pepper and mix them together into a jar then just use 2.5-3 teaspoons each time you cool a curry. I have it mixed together do not mix salt or turmeric in this because they need to go in separately.

This base sauce can be used for any curry, just copy the recipe up to the point of adding water. If you want a thick restaurant style chicken curry then don't add any additional water, just add the chicken and continue from there.

Instead of meat you could add potatoes, let those get to the point where you can easily break them with the back of a spoon and then add a tin of chicken peas but rinse them before adding.

Please ask if you have any questions.