When Porky met Curry

What's the best option when eating out? Indian, right?

What's the best roasted meat? Pork, right?

Why can't you get curried pork in Indian restaurants? That would be the most amazing thing ever, right?

It is, however, even in this age of every-conceivable-fusion, still remarkably rare. Never the twain shall met. Which is a bit odd. I know there is a cultural and religious explanation, but it's a lazy one, and under scrutiny it doesn't  really make a whole lot of sense.

The curry of my youth - Lamb Tikka Rogan

Back in the 80s, the longest shadow hanging over the world was the hole in the Ozone layer. Then it was Third World Debt, then the Banking Crisis.

Now it's Shit Takeaways.

I used to be staunchly of the opinion that any curry cooked at home would never be quite as good as the equivalent dish from your local Tandoori restaurant. They had the specialist equipment; The spices you can't buy anywhere without being in the know; The proper Tandoor oven.

Now I'm not so sure - while there are some perfectly good places plying their trade in the 21st century marketplaces of Just Eat and HungryHouse, there are also some right munters, pigstrotters and tugboats out there. (If you accept that these terms can apply as equally to shit takeaways as they might to someone picked up in a shit nightclub before picking up a shit takeaway!)

Second to Naan

So, Mrs B-V and I have been up in Yorkshire for a couple of days, mostly to drink beer and watch our annual opening-day defeat. No surprises there.

No way, no fucking way!

But we discovered, completely by accident, a lovely little pub - the Fox in Shipley - as well as visiting several favourite haunts in the city of York, and there was a surprise in store there too.

The biggest-by-fucking-miles naan bread I've seen in my entire 37 years.

Honestly, I couldn't believe it. Let alone eat the bastard.

Overall, the food at Akbar's is pretty indifferent and consists basically of a few simple variations upon a standard Balti theme, some of which weren't as saucy as their clearly needed to be.

But the huge naans, served upright on vast spikey towers, are blogworthy out of their sheer ridiculousness.

This wasn't some sort of special Guinness Book of Records attempt or anything either - it's a standard menu item. Most people seemed to have one on their table!

It utterly dwarfed my garlic chicken tikka balti, which itself was a decent size.

I guess things are bigger up north. Though not necessarily better...

Two Unlimiteds

It's now been well over a year since my Grandma died and a lifetime of home-cooked Sunday lunches came to an end.

The rest of the family still meet for lunch on Sundays, but these days it's not usually one of us that's cooking it. Sometimes we'll go to one of our old favourite restaurants where we used to go with Grandma; sometimes we'll go to a pub; sometimes we'll try somewhere new so I can blog about it.

But, more than anywhere else, we go to the Princess of India.

It's an all-you-can eat buffet in Morden - a part of South London that has seen better times and which generally doesn't trouble the hit parade of foodie destiations. No, it doesn't look like much from the outside either, but then neither do the finest restaurants in India.

Apparently they do home deliveries from a normal menu, but then I don't live anywhere near Morden, and if I did live near enough for them to deliver to me, I'd make the effort to go out for all I could eat. Every time.

Do they have Vanuatuan takeaways in El Salvador?

I remarked the other day that it was almost impossible to find food that identified as 'United Arab Emiratean' in Dubai. (Which is in the United Arab Emirates if you needed reminding!)

This got me thinking.

Think, think, think went my brain, like some sort of vast, organic thinking machine.

And I came to the conclusion that this criticism is possibly a bit harsh, if only because the UAE is far from alone in having a dismally flaccid presence in the World League of Food.

Want to know what I'm banging on about? Hold tight for some Gastro-geopolitical discourse.

Krishna versus Krishna

A few weeks ago, when talking about a few of my favourite restaurants, I mentioned in passing that Tooting was pretty much the place in London to go for authentic South Indian food. No, you wouldn't have gleaned that impression from watching Citizen Smith, but it's true nonetheless.

And having dangled that carrot bhaji in front of your noses for a while, it's probably about time I backed up this assertion with a couple of reviews; As it happens I've eaten in a couple of the area's South Indian restaurants recently with a view to comparing the twain, so here goes!

Beware of the Goddess

If you're not used to South Indian food, it can come as quite a surprise, being substantially different from the more common Tandoori cuisine, which is of North Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin.

And indeed British.

See, pretty much all 'foreign' food in this country has inevitably been Anglicised over the past few decades. However, I suspect that most of the stuff on the menus of the Vijaya Krishna and Radha Krishna Bhavan in Tooting has a more credible ethnic provenance than, say, the Chicken Tikka Masalas and King Prawn Baltis you'll find in your average Tandoori house.

One thing you'll notice is that there are relatively few meat and chicken dishes on the menu, and plenty of fish and vegetarian options, as is typical of the diet in Goa and Kerala. And while the majority of North Indian restaurants seem to be Muslim-owned and run, both these places have a distinctly Hindu flavour, specifically a dedication to Krishna (though the Radha Krishna Bhavan actually has a huge statue of the Goddess Kali in the corner, watching over all who eat there!)

But this head-to-head contest is strictly Krishna vs Krishna with no interference from other God(ess)s permitted, and there can, of course, be only one winner...

Unchained eateries - a treble-mega review

One of my faithful readers - as opposed to an unfaithful one, presumably - recently noted that I’ve been reviewing a fair few chain restaurants lately.

While she didn’t quite stray into ‘criticise the critic’ territory, I detected a hint of ‘you can do better and I’m ever-so-slightly disappointed’ in her general tone, as if she thought somebody as interesting and eccentric as I should be looking beyond the boring, everyday chains.

In my defence, there is a method to the blandness, if you will: I aim for most of my reviews to be relevant to a pretty wide audience, and a broader range of readers will be able to experience Café Rouge or Haché by simply locating their nearest branch, rather than having to trek somewhere a long way away.

But I do take the point that independent restaurants are generally – though not always – superior, and so today I give you three of my favourite independent, one-of-a-kind restaurants. My 'chain reaction', as it were.

(OK, I'll stop making the sort of bad pun that has to be followed by 'if you will' or 'as it were' now. I can't believe I did it in consecutive paragraphs. What the fuck was I thinking?)

You might have to travel further to check them out, but these are places worth going out of your way for. Even if that means going to Tooting.

I’m talking Curry. I’m talking Pizza. And I’m talking Kebabs. Three of the major food groups.

And if you happen to live locally to one of these undiscovered gems, you're in for a big fat bastard of a treat. I guarantee it.

A tale of two curries (and a side dish)

Over the last year or so I’ve been perfecting some curry recipes, but haven't written much about them since my Murgh Keema Masala well over a year ago - actually the very first recipe I published on this blog

The ability to cook a really good curry will elevate you above the plebs – unfortunately all too many homemade curries are either bland and watery or just one-dimensionally hot and lacking in finesse.

Fortunately yours don’t have to be like this.

In the privacy of your own kitchen it can be hard to come up with something exactly like a curry you'd eat in a restaurant (largely due to the lack of proper tandoor ovens and other specialised equipment in most homes), but you can make a curry at home that's both excellent in it's own right and also significantly healthier than the old tandoori restaurant standards - which is a particular concern of mine at the moment, obviously.

Enjoy.

Chicken Tikka Bhuna

For best results, preparation the day before is required. The recipe works equally well with king prawns.

Ingredients - serves four



Chicken breast pieces, skinless, bitesize, about 1½ lbs
Onions, 2 large or 3 small, quartered

Red chillies, 2-3, chopped – more if you like it hot

Green peppers, 2, sliced into rings  
Tomatoes, 4-5, quartered

Garlic, several cloves, finely chopped

Red tandoori powder, quite a lot

Cumin

Paprika

Ginger, ground

Natural yoghurt or light sour cream, as much as is needed

Oil

Water (if required)

Fresh coriander, coarsely chopped (optional)

Method:

The key to this recipe is getting a good, authentic tandoori powder (a specialist shop, Asian market stall or the ‘ethnic foods’ section of a big supermarket will have this).

Make your tandoori marinade by mixing the tandoori powder with yoghurt (about 50/50) to create a thick paste, and thoroughly coat your chicken pieces. Leave in the fridge overnight if possible.

Once the chicken has marinated overnight, put the pieces on a baking tray and cook in the oven at about 200 for 20-25 minutes, until the edges just start to char.

Meanwhile, take a big pan with a lid and fry the garlic and chilli in a little oil, along with another generous pinch of the tandoori spice mix and the cumin, paprika and ginger.

Looking good...

After a couple of minutes add the onion, and then the peppers and tomatoes, before finally transferring the cooked chicken to the pan, along with any excess spicy yoghurt mix.

Turn the heat down, whack the lid on, and cook for at least an hour. A Bhuna should be quite a thick and dryish curry, so you shouldn’t need a lot of extra liquid, beyond what emerges naturally from the tomatoes and peppers, but add a little water if it’s so dry that it might burn, even on a low.

While the flavours improve with slow cooking, it’s important not to overdo it – the tomatoes should maintain their shape, and the peppers should be slightly crunchy.

A nice flourish with this and many curries is to chuck in some fresh coriander shortly before serving.

This type of curry is best served with a naan bread and a vegetable side dish (eg a garlic saag bhaji – see below).

Mixed vegetable Balti

This is a main-dish vegetarian curry - you can vary the exact vegetables used fairly extensively

 

Ingredients - serves four:

Carrots, 3-4, thickly sliced

Tasting good!

Courgette, 1 big or 2 small, sliced Aubergine, 1 full-size or 2 or more baby, diced

Onions, 2 large or 3 small, quartered

Tomatoes, 4-5, quartered

Green pepper, 1, sliced into rings

Chillis, chopped, as much as you feel like

Garlic, a few cloves, finely chopped or mushed

Fresh coriander, several leaves, coarsely chopped

Curry leaves, a few

Ground Cumin

Ginger, chopped fresh or ground.

Cayenne pepper

Turmeric

Black pepper

Cardamom pods

Lemon juice

Natural yoghurt

Oil

Water

Flour to thicken (if required)

Method:

Heat the oil in a big, lidded pan, and fry the garlic, ginger and chilli, adding the onion and dried spices after a couple of minutes. These spices are just a guide – you can achieve different flavours with other combinations.

Keep the heat on high and add all your vegetables, with a little water and lemon juice if it’s too dry. Ensure everything is mixed up and your spices are nicely coating everything.

After a few minutes, turn the heat down to somewhere in the middle and stick the lid on. Leave to cook for about an hour, stirring occasionally.

You’ll find the liquid level increases somewhat, so you might need to add a little flour to thicken things up. Stir in plenty of natural yoghurt and cook on high again for five minutes or so before serving.

Vegetable curries are very flexible and other ingredients could include chunks of cauliflower or (parboiled) potato.

Rice, puris, mango chutney and a cold beer are all worthy accompaniments and again, chuck in some fresh, tasty coriander before serving.

 

Garlic Saag Bhaji

 

A flavoursome side dish that will compliment most curries

Ingredients:

Spinach leaves (you’ll need a surprisingly large amount)

Onion, a little, finely chopped

Garlic, plenty, sliced thinly as opposed to chopped

Asafoetida, a generous pinch

Black Onion seeds, a generous pinch

Salted butter or ghee

Method:

Melt the butter in a large frying pan, and fry the onion on high for a couple of minutes, before adding the garlic, asafoetida and black onion seeds.

Continue to fry the onion and spices and ensure the surface of the pan is coated with flavoursome goodness, then start adding your spinach leaves.

You should have enough spinach to fill the pan and still have some left over – don’t worry, it will reduce exponentially in volume.

Keep the spinach moving so that the onion and garlic are all mixed in, and keep going until you’ve added all the leaves.

Within a couple of minutes it will be reduced to a think clump of green, and when you can no longer make out the shapes of individual leaves, it’s ready to serve!

This dish can be kept in the pan and reheated later, or indeed microwaved.

My Big Fat Asian Wedding Food Tasting

I had anticipated eating rather well this past weekend, mainly because we were taking a friend out for a belated birthday dinner to a new contemporary English steakhouse in Newbury, and given my recent musings on the topic, I was eager to see how their fayre would, err, fare.

(if you’re wondering, the sirloin was admirably thick and juicy – though it could have been bluer – with a slightly smokey flavour, the vegetables were mismatched and plain, the so-called buffalo wings were a disappointing starter with little to no heat, and the crème brulee a perfectly acceptable sweet)

Anyway, in order to work up an appetite, I’d already decided I probably wouldn’t have a pie at the footie, and as it happened, I was completely stuffed as I watched Reading 'beating' us 0-0, and still not vastly hungry by the time we arrived at the restaurant.

The reason for my unexpected all-day satiety? Getting married next month! Not in the sense of romantic loss of appetite (which has never seemed to manifest itself in me, strangely enough) but because we had a ‘food tasting’ at a place we were looking at doing the catering for our reception. And, boy, what a tasting it was!

Blumenthall ain't the only Heston in town

I didn’t have a clue what to expect when we ventured gingerly into brunchtime Heston (yes, the place near Hounslow, known only for it's motorway service station), and the slightly scratty industrial estate where Premier Rouge are based.

Tikka taste test

All we knew is that my girlfriend had enjoyed the food at an event they had catered for a few years ago, and upon getting the name of the company from a friend of a friend, we realised that they were very competitively priced, which is a good start as we're hoping to get married as cheaply as possible, and ideally make a profit on the whole thing!

We opened their door, caught a glimpse of their kitchen, and wandered upstairs - the interior was far plusher than anywhere for miles around, with a dreamlike incongruity. One corner of the room was like a small office, another a bar area, another was like the waiting area in a massage parlour with big red sofas a wall-mounted TV (though not showing hardcore porn, admittedly) and the last was a mini restaurant with just one, elaborately decorated, table.

Out came the first of many, many courses, a big yoghurty plate of Dahi Aloo Papri Chat, bursting with different flavours and textures. Not knowing how much we were meant to take, or what was to come, we just took a couple of mouthfuls each, barely denting the dish. That turned out to be a wise strategy as the table was furnished with the mango chutney and mint sauce that heralded a range of starters to come.

There was well-executed chicken tikka and seekh kebabs, which is just what you need to kick off an Indian style banquet, and some of the veggie starters were to die for - potato pakora with chana massala, a perfectly cooked paneer tikka with a deep tandoori flavour, and the gloriously sweet and spicy chilli paneer.

They kept on bringing up plate after plate, then once the starters were done, they began to bring out plate after plate of main dishes, with a robust, classic Chicken curry, a lovely Rogan Josh full of tomatoes and really tender lamb pieces, and various other dishes I've lost track of. Rice, Naan and salad were all provided of course.

The only really unpleasant thing out of around 25 different starters, curries, bhajis and sweets, was the massala fried fish, which looked lovely, but the batter suffered from a really metallic taste, a bit like those low-sodium salt substitutes.

Personally, I hate peas and so the muttar paneer weren't things we'd be choosing, but the quality was generally exceptional throughout. I've also never particularly enjoyed Asian desserts, but did eat half of my gulab jamun, as it wasn't too sweet, and that's way more than I'd usually manage.

When we could eat no more, we wondered if we'd be presented with some kind of a bill, maybe deductable from our catering order, or at least some high-pressure sales pitch to ensure that we didn't take our business elsewhere.

But there was nothing. We actually had to ask one of the guys if we could discuss the business side of things. I guess they are confident enough in the quality of their food and reasonableness of their prices that most people who try the tasting will go with them anyway.

Their food is better than most restaurants I've dined in - and I've dined in a lot of Indian restaurants. Premier Rouge's owner explained how and why - banquetting menus are chosen way in advance, so they can properly prepare and marinate and get everything right, whereas restaurants have to respond to an unpredictable range of short orders in rapid succession.

You know it makes sense

It makes sense, so it does.


Free for all

Even now, a few days later, I can't get over the fact that this delicious multi-course tasting menu experience was free. Yes, we're going to book them, because they're very tasty and exceptional value to boot, but we never felt under obligation to do so.

How many other caterers are out there offering similar deals to people who say they are interested in booking catering for their wedding (or indeed any other event)? For years after we're married we can go around pretending to be newly-engaged just so we can get freebies from different caterers.

Don't take this as endorsement for blagging plate upon plate of free banquetting food, but it would be pretty easy to pull off this scam. Even if you only get away with it once, you'll save yourself the cost of a meal out. Not that I told you that. It's tempting though, isn't it? 

After eating so well on Saturday I needed to be brought back down to culinary reality on Sunday, and Mr. Wetherspoon duly obliged with a truly execrable turkey dinner. A karmic warning in the light of my scamtastic thoughts, perhaps. With peas.

The art of the possible - Murgh Keema Masala

When I eat at a Pizza/Pasta type restaurant (a real Italian one as opposed to a Pizza Hut, obviously), I’ll almost always choose a pizza from the menu, rather than a pasta or risotto or tuscan bean stew or anything else. Probably 95% of the time. In fact the only time I wouldn’t would be if I’d had pizza the day before or something.

That’s not because I’m a huge pizza aficionado, or because I don’t believe the other dishes on the menu would be fantastic. It’s because a stone-baked pizza or wood-fired pizza is one of those dishes that it’s almost impossible to adequately recreate at home without the requisite stone-baking or wood-firing malarkey.

I know I can cook more-than-acceptable Italian-style dishes -  My pancetta and parma ham linguine and seafood risotto rock like a bastardino. I also know that any attempt to make pizza will result in something rather half-hearted and uninspiring.

Same with fish and chips. Leave it to the experts. They can do something unique that the home chef without the specialist knowledge and equipment will struggle to achieve. Kebabs too, I suppose.

And, thinking about it, it’s the reason why I usually drink real ale in pubs, rather than a bottle of beer (or wine or cider etc.) which would taste exactly the same at home.

Anyway, Indian (or, rather, South Asian) food is diverse enough that it falls between two stools of thought here. (It’s also diverse enough to accommodate mixed metaphors, thank you very much.)

Sometimes I’ll make a curry at home and it’ll taste as good as any similar dish in a restaurant, but I’ve also enjoyed some fantastic dishes in Indian restaurants that I know I’ll never be able to cook myself. 

No, I don't own one either



I guess using a proper Tandoor (which I don’t own and wouldn’t have space for) makes the difference here, just as an authentic pizza oven hides the secret behind great pizza. I do occasionally muse upon this reality, without much further analysis, admittedly, because food that I can and do actually cook and eat seems to be rather more worthy of earnest consideration than that which I can't and don't!

So, this week, I decided to cook a curry or two, and my girlfriend suggested in a fit of adventurousness, that it might contain boiled egg(!) and my mind immediately turned to a dish I’d enjoyed many years ago.

It not only worked out amazingly well, it has the added bonus that the ingredients can also produce a delicious starter by way of a side product.

It takes a little while, but the result is a luxurious dish of the kind you’d normally find on the ‘chef’s specials’ section of the menu.

More importantly, you'd never know that the tandoori components hadn't been cooked in a real tandoor, so you get the warm fuzzy feeling of cheating and getting away with it.

These three recipes should be within the capability of any decent home chef.

Keema Murgh Massala

Seekh Kebabs

Chicken Tikka will never taste as good in a regular oven, but just because the tikka you're in a position to make isn't authentic enough to eat on it's own, there's no reason not to include it in a thrice-cooked feast where the tikka pieces end up in a flavoursome sauce, giving you the best of both worlds.

This is one such dish, with the tikka pieces eventually finding their home in a spicy keema (minced lamb) sauce, and as a by-product there will be tasty lamb kebabs to enjoy as a first course!

Ingredients:

Chicken fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces

Minced lamb, half for the kebabs, half for the keema sauce.

Hard boiled eggs, shelled, whole, one per serving

Onion, finely chopped, roughly one medium onion per serving

Tomatoes, at least 1 ½ medium tomatoes per serving, a mixture of finely chopped and cut into quarters

Plain yoghurt, quite a lot

A lemon or two, for juice and segments

Red pepper, finely chopped

Garlic, plenty, chopped

Fresh coriander leaves, roughly torn

Tandoori spice mix (red spice powder)

Black pepper

Black onion seeds

Asafoetida

Chilli powder

Ginger

Butter

Method:

The first thing is to marinate your chicken, and if you can do this a day before eating and keep it marinating in the fridge then even better.

Just whack some of your tandoori spices into some yoghurt with a smidge of lemon juice and as much chilli powder as you choose, stir it all up, then coat your chicken pieces all over and leave for a while,

It’s a good idea to marinate it in the big oven dish you plan on cooking the curry in, because all the marinade left behind can become part of the curry eventually anyway.

When you’re ready to cook, you’ll need to allow a couple of hours, though there will be seekh kebabs to enjoy in the mean time.

Take roughly half your minced lamb and add some spice mix and chilli powder with maybe a tiny drop of lemon juice.

Work it in thoroughly with your hands (it should be red rather than ‘lamby’ in colour) and form solid little turd-shaped kebabs.

You can put these on a baking tray with the chicken tikka pieces and cook it all at the same time – it goes into a medium oven for about half an hour, turning everything over half way through cooking, and draining off the juices (into your main curry pan).

You should remove the chicken from the oven a little earlier than if you were just cooking chicken tikka, because it’s going to be cooked two times more!

The kebabs can go back in for a little longer, until red-brown and slightly crispy - or do this later when you're ready to serve them as your starter.

Serve with a little yoghurt and a wedge of lemon, and maybe some salad.

You can also search them cold in a naan wrap if there are some left over.

While that little lot is in the oven, you can begin making the curry.

Heat some butter in a big sautee pan with a lid, and add the chopped garlic (not the slices), and most (but not all) of the onion.

After a few minutes, when it’s simmering nicely, add some black pepper, chilli powder, black onion seeds, asafoetida and ginger, and a minute or two later, whack in the minced lamb and chopped peppers, making sure everything gets coated nicely with the spices and the lamb is properly cooked. If it starts to disintegrate that's not really a problem.

At some point you’ll be able to add the excess juices from the tikka and kebabs that are cooking in the oven, and this would be a good time to put in the chopped tomatoes (but not the tomato quarters) and keep it cooking gently until the chicken in the oven is ready.

OK, so you've cooked your chicken tikka and kebabs, so the time to make it all come together is almost at hand.


Add the cooked chicken tikka to your curry, along with the quartered tomatoes and a big fistful of fresh coriander.

Cook it on a low heat with the lid down for 15-20 minutes - the aromas should be lovely by now.

Now, go back to the dish where it all started (where you marinated the chicken) and transfer everything back into that, adding the boiled eggs at this time. Everything should be mixed up nicely and the keema sauce should be lovely and thick and moist.

If it’s too dry, add a little more yoghurt, maybe diluted with a spoon or two of boiling water. But bear in mind that the tomatoes will add liquid and the lamb juices richness.

It’s now time for the final phase – put the lid on the dish and return it to the oven, where it will improve on a low heat for 30 minutes or so, during which time you can cook the rice or nan bread or whatever you want, or possibly a garlic mushroom bhaji.

When you serve it, make sure everyone gets an egg and a few big bits of tomato.

Garlic Mushroom Bhaji

This is a really easy side dish and contrasts nicely with the Murgh Keema Masala.

Ingredients:

Chestnut mushrooms, chopped

Garlic, thinly sliced, lots

Onion, a small amount, chopped

Turmeric

Cumin

Butter

Method:

Take a regular frying pan and fry the onion and garlic in butter, then add the spices – don’t be afraid to be generous.

After a few minutes, add the chopped mushrooms and cook on a medium heat until the mushrooms start to soften and the garlic slivers turn brown. That's it. Serve it with your main curry.


A simple naan bread or basmati rice completes the meal, and you might want to drink an appropriate beer with it. Cobra is fine, King Cobra better, and Wolverhampton & Dudley brew an 'Ultimate Curry Beer', but my preferred option would be a chilled bottle of Brewdog Punk IPA, which I find an excellent accompaniment to spicy food.