Need Help Cooking Restaurant Style Oriental Food

I've never cooked Thai food at home, but with home-cooked Chinese food I've found the dishes (main ones, not rice ones) taste fairly authentic when I've put a good slug of oyster sauce in. As for home-cooked Indian, once just to see how it would come out, I added a tablespoonful of tabouleh salad which I bought from a health food shop. Strangely that addition of tabouleh salad made the Indian meal taste pretty close to a restaurant curry. The very best curry I've ever tasted in my life was cooked by an Indian friend I used to have many years ago. I went to her house and she cooked a Chicken Bhuna. It was so very delicious that I asked her for the recipe and for some Indian cooking tips. She told me to always cook the spices over a very high heat until they start to smoke, but not to inhale the fumes. Now when I cook curries at home, though I've not been able to buy any tabouleh salad for ages, I always burn the spices and it gives a fairly authentic Indian flavour.

The reason the recipes you make at home never taste like what you get at the restaurants is "the secret". lol. They've got some little spice or some little trick that they don't let you in on. Here's a link to the place I use to get my favorite recipes: http://www.copykat.com/ This website has been around for about 10 years or so and has a great collection of stuff. Hope you find something there that will "make your week"!

I am also a big fan of oriental/Asian recipes and here is a site that I often refer to whenever I feel like whipping up some of those. The instructions here are pretty clear and so there is no chance you can spoil the deal! :) So try this out and let me know if this was of any help - http://www.ifood.tv/network/oriental_recipes/recipes Enjoy and take care! :)