Basaar300g

The everyday curry base. One spoonful turns an onion, a couple of tomatoes and whatever protein is in the fridge into a glossy, restaurant-style curry, and the pack is sized for the way families actually cook, again and again, not once for a special occasion.

This is the blend that gets used most and thought about least, which is exactly what a curry base should be. It lives by the hob, not at the back of the cupboard.

A spice rack in one spoon

Count what goes in. Chilli and turmeric for the colour and the warmth. Cumin, coriander and fenugreek, the three that make a curry taste like a curry. Then mustard, both the ground seed and the oil, and that's the one to notice: mustard oil is what gives curry-house cooking its sharp, savoury edge, and supermarket curry powders leave it out. Behind all that sit the deep notes, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, black cardamom, star anise and bay, in the background where they belong.

Assembling that shelf yourself costs more than the weekly shop and leaves you with eleven jars you'll never finish. One spoonful of Basaar is the whole rack, already in proportion.

The salt is yours, on purpose

Unlike our other blends, there's no salt in Basaar, and that's a decision, not an oversight. A curry gets salted at the pot, because how much it needs depends on your tomatoes, your stock, your protein and your table. We handle the spices, the seasoning stays in your hands. If your curry ever tastes flat, it's almost never missing spice. It's missing salt.

How it earns the big pack

Basaar comes in 300g because a curry base has no business running out. A tablespoon does a family curry for four, so one pack keeps the dinners coming for months: chicken on Tuesday, lamb at the weekend, chickpeas and spinach when the fridge is bare. Same spoon, different pot, no two dinners quite alike.

Start with the Chicken Curry recipe: half an hour, one pan, and it teaches you the oil-split trick that tells you when any curry is done. Once you've cooked it twice you won't need the page.