Tandoori Beef Curry

Tonight's Curry Beef is a good example of my cooking "method". I make changes and substitutions to almost every recipe and I don't usually measure anything. However, I have it fresh in mind and my husband wants me to make the dish again, so I'm including my notes
This is the recipe that I looked at and then modified greatly.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Fragrant-Beef-Curry-with-Rice-104202
>What it says---------------------------What I used/did
>1.5 C milk---------------------------1 can coconut milk
>6 whole cloves----------------------4 large whole cloves
>2 garlic cloves----------------------6 garlic cloves
>2 large onions-----------------------half an onion
>2 cinnamon sticks------------------some ground cinnamon
>2T fresh ginger---------------------some ground ginger
>1.5T curry--------------------------1T Tandoori Spice Blend (which contains ginger and cinnamon already, so I didn't add a whole lot more in the above steps)
>3 tomatoes, red pepper & [mango] chutney-------------------I didn't have mango chutney and I was  going to skip the tomatoes and red  pepper until I remembered I have  mango salsa sooo... I added about 0.5C mild mango salsa and 0.25C apricot preserves
>Brown meat chunks 7mins each batch------------------------------In reality the browning only took about 2mins per batch, but keep the batches fairly small so the oil stays hot and you don't toughen the meat
The rest is the same

As for method, I chose to caramelize the onion, add the garlic for a few minutes then added everything but the browned meat and let that come to a simmer then I added the meat and juices and continued the directions.

This is not my dish, HAHA, but it most resembles it. Travel Blog Source

This is the spice blend I use, it is not too spice-hot and all my family likes it. I have to admit though, mine is quite old and has probably mellowed over time.