Mushroom Curry -- that is so not happening!

A catering career and a lifetime of cooking should have made me sensitive to my instincts about a recipe, you'd think eh?

We went to my youngest son's recently and his lovely wife cooked for us and one of the things she served was the most delicious mushroom curry. I decided I would like to have a go so I googled. A person should always google first and I found lots of recipes but only one where the illustration looked similar to the food we had eaten.

I looked at the ingredients.
Green Cardamom. I confess that I had to google again to see what they looked like and then to see where we could buy them. My son-in-law finally found some in the Marsala Bazaar which is just down the road from here. They have loads of marvellous things in there.
Cloves. What? ok got it
Fresh Ginger, ok we know that. A bit sweet though.
Green Chillies. So not going in my curry as I am allergic to them.
Garam Masala. got it
Chillie powder. got it
Garlic Paste. got it

Then the instructions.
This is where the misgivings began. Something about the fact that one line read "...cook briefly until the raw smell go away"
This would be a problem as my sense of smell has never recovered from the virus of four years ago.

We finally got all the ingredients together, including enough yoghurt before Mr M ate it, so yesterday I made the curry, following the instructions to the letter.
I put it on the plates with the rice.
We both ate one small forkful and while I scraped the plates into the foood recycling bin Mr M ordered chinese to be delivered. The taste of cloves was nearly overpowering but it was off set by the green cardamom. Those two flavours battled with the sharpness of the yoghurt and lost. The only thing that would have changed it were the chillies
~sigh~
The chinese was lovely