There is a dish called Balti Ghost (literally “bucket meat”) but its quite different from whats found in England as a “Balti”.
No you don’t. Anymore than the multitude of dishes found in the sub-continent called “English-style” or “British” are done well.
I like what the Brits call Indian food. I ate it constantly when I lived there. Its good food. It is inspired by what the British think is sub-continental cuisine and stuff they took. It stands on its own merits.
Several Indian restaurants will serve you authentic food if you ask. Lots of Indian and Pakistani students used to do that. Tayyabs used to (in London) and so did Lahore Kebab House.
Are you seriously only talking about London? And also somewhere called a kebab house?
Your highly myopic view is clearly from a long time ago. And being based in London. Where I wouldn’t enter their version of an “indian” restaurant, or “kebab house” (which usually means turkish food).
Lahore Kebab House
Kebab exists in the Sub-Continent and the Arab world as well…
Well, of course it does, however, you call your restaurant and “kebab house” in the UK, your reference to authenticity goes completely out of the window. Next up you’ll be complaining about the curry sauce you got down “Jasminders Fish and Fry”.
And you did not address as the question as to if your experience of “indian food” is based around eating out in London, the culinary black hole of the UK.
@AK84, @Smid: This is a thread to discuss recipes for Chicken Korma, not to get into fights over how authentic Indian food is in London, or whatever. Please drop the subject, unless you link it directly to answering the OP’s question.
(e.g.: “if you want korma like they make it at Kebab House in London, here’s a recipe”)
Thanks for your consideration.
Lahore kebab house is rightly famous in London for serving fantastic Pakistani-inspired food. You’re displaying your own ignorance by fighting such a recommendation.
And this comment is frankly bizarre
Looks delicious
Question on this part of your recipe, @CairoCarol-- is there an advantage to cooking the whole spices in the recipe this way? When I make a curry I lightly brown all of the whole spices I’m using in a pan, then grind them up finely and add them. Couldn’t you do this with cardamom seeds and cloves? Seems like you could use a much smaller amount as well.
Bay leaves are different-- even though you can buy powdered bay leaves, I don’t like to keep powdered herbs and spices if I can avoid it, since they get stale too quickly. And bay leaves are hard to grind into powder, so I always cook them whole and remove them later.
Other than that grinding up spices is a nuisance? And that I’d have to fiddle with all my recipes to figure out how much I need to use?
Probably not.
But I do a modest amount of Indian cooking, and quite a lot of recipes have me start by sautéing whole spices, and that’s how I always make them. I usually leave them in when I serve it fresh, but fish them out before putting away the leftovers. That’s partly so you don’t eat a whole cardamom pod, but also because the flavors can become too strong if the whole spices sit in the dish in the fridge over night. (Or at least, locally too strong – the bite next to the cinnamon stick is overly cinnamony.)
When asking about South Asian recipes, it’s useful to consider regional variations in English and not be critical of those variations:
Sorta like reading a recipe from the southern US and saying “what do they mean by grits? Drives me crazy”
OK, to each their own, I guess. Seems like most recipes I’ve come across call for toasting the whole spices, then grinding. Most curries I make use cumin and coriander, which need grinding, so I’m used to it. And I have a container of cardamom seeds, so I don’t mess with the pods. Maybe the whole pods add more flavor, but the cardamom seed flavor is pretty overpowering as it is.
I just thought CairoCarol’s recipe calling for 24 whole cloves, added and removed, seemed like a lot of cloves, and a lot of work to remove them before serving, that’s all.
24 whole cloves?! I didn’t actually read the recipe. Most of my recipes call for 2-4 whole cloves.
I double-checked, and her recipe says 24. Maybe CairoCarol meant to add a dash between the 2 and the 4…? It also says 12 cardamom pods, which also seems like a lot.
Depends on how many gallons of soup she’s making! 
@solost and @puzzlegal - no, it really is 24 cloves and 12 cardamom pods.
I don’t mind roasting and grinding spices, so for me that might be a reasonable alternative to fishing out individual spice bits (the cloves aren’t too bad, because the color contrasts with the gravy, but it’s hell to find all the cardamom. I think I wasted quite a few hours of my life on that process before I figured out an alternative.)
Anyway, I just copied and pasted that recipe from my files - I had typed it up years ago when a friend who ate it at my house wanted the recipe, and I didn’t reread what I’d written. My thinking on the cheesecloth has evolved since then - I’m careful to tie the spices into a large enough space that they have room to move around and get thoroughly soaked as the gravy cooks, and I press them with a wooden spoon as they are cooking to make sure all the volatile oils are released. The dish comes out fine.
Thanks @CairoCarol! Your recipe sounds great, btw. Definitely going to file it and try it sometime.
Made it last night. Just a wee bit of sauce left over. 
I over-fryed the onions, dark brown instead of golden, so the sauce was much darker than the orange in the video, but other than that ,great!
Will try some of the other recipes later on.
Thanks, all!
If you’re posting on the internet for an international audience, you have to assume not everyone knows what you’re talking about. I’ve cooked quite a bit of Indian food, but it doesn’t mean I can intuit what someone means by “chili powder”. I can assume that it’s similar to cayenne, but perhaps it means something else. A few footnotes would be helpful.