Hi there. For anyone who’s not aware, we started celebrating Babur’s 22nd birthday on 9 July – a bit early but then it’s so unusual for a restaurant to be in business for that long we thought we'd make the most of it. The specials for July and August are all being presented as a tasting menu – a first for Babur - and the nenu was tried and retried and tried again. We did more tasting than we usually do to be sure we wouldn’t let our guests down with our first tasting menu and our birthday celebration.
We debated a lot over how to decorate for this 22nd birthday and in the end decided to keep it simple. We hung lots of pennant-shaped pieces of coloured card with the number 2 on both sides in upper part of our front window. The colours are similar to the colours of our signature piece of art, the kolum kari by Ajit Kumar Das that is built into the wall in our reception area. We’ve been pleasantly surprised with response to the tasting menu - we never did one before and were not sure what to expect. But so far the uptake has been about 30%.
If you’re on our mailing list you’ll have received your 22nd birthday voucher good for a £22 discount and if you’re not, you’ll receive one when you come in that will be good for a discount on your next visit.
Last week we took Jiwan and Rajendar Pandey (the head chef from my other restaurant, Planet Spice) to Rasoi Vineet Bhatia. We decided to go somewhere away from our kitchens because the chefs have been working hard and needed to wind down somewhere good for a reward. The restaurant is in Chelsea and has a Michelin star. We were very impressed with their service. The staff are mostly non-Indians and I quizzed them on ingredients of the dishes and their knowledge of the food was really very good. Along with our waiter, who was French, the sommelier also pitched in and, along with his knowledge of the wines, he also knew the food very well. We tried the tasting menu and also a la carte so that we tasted virtually the whole menu. There were dishes from across India, mostly presented in a European style and we enjoyed Vineet’s cooking very much.
Meanwhile, back at Babur, our two wine champions, Arjun and Rupom were very impressed with the Wine and Spirit Education course. Both want to go on and do the next level. Arjun went on to a cognac tasting class. They tried over a dozen different cognacs, including a taste from a very old bottle that $10,000.
I’ll leave you now with a recipe from one of our chefs who hasn’t been featured yet, Sanjay Kumar. Sanjay is a very diligent worker who knows his cooking but he’s so very quiet I’m afraid he’s been overlooked until now and wanted to give him a moment in the spotlight.
LAMB PATIALISAHI
Serves 4
Ingredients
1kg lamb a mix of boneless diced and lamb on the bone
250g chopped tomatoes
300g sliced onion
4 green capsicum (diced)
125ml vegetable oil
Salt to taste
25g ginger paste
25g garlic paste
4 black cardamoms
5 whole cloves
2 bay leaves
2 sticks cassia
1tsp whole black peppercorns
2tsp red chilli powder
1tsp turmeric
4tsp coriander powder
2tsp cumin powder
Method:
Clean the lamb in cold water and put in a strainer.
Heat oil in a handi or in a deep pan and add all the whole spices.
Add sliced onion and stir for a while. When it turns a light golden colour, add ginger and garlic paste and bhunao (cook over moderate heat until the liquid evaporates).
Add lamb and stir it continuously for 20 minutes. Add a little water then add all the powdered spices and salt. Cover and let simmer on a low flame until meat is tender, stirring occasionally.
Add tomatoes and let continue cooking untill meat is completely done.
In a frying pan heat 1tsp of oil and add diced capsicum and cook for 1minute then add into the lamb curry and mix well.
Serve this lamb curry with naan or pulao rice
Friday, 27 July 2007
Saturday, 16 June 2007
Work and wait patiently
Hello there. Glad you could stop by.
Sometimes you have to take a long view of things and just wait and work patiently. That’s how it’s been for our two wine champions, Arjun and Rupom. Way back in March when we were trying out wines to go with our Rajasthani festival menu, Peter McCombie MW (our wine consultant) said that for some people, the idea of a sommelier is a bit intimidating and that he liked the idea of a wine champion. This is someone who is interested in wine and how it works with food, someone who can talk with customers about the flavours and how they will best work together.
For many of our staff, who are Muslim, this isn’t really practical, but fortunately for us, Arjun and Rupom were really enthusiastic about combining wine and food and – as Hindus – drinking wine is not a religious problem for them. Peter suggested that the Wine and Spirit Education Trust courses would be good to help them along and make them feel more confident in talking with customers.
Since then, they’ve really taken hold of their role as our wine champions. We had quite a bit of wine from our old list that was no longer available from our suppliers. But there were mostly odd bottles and suppliers will only take back whole cases, so we thought to sell them as bin ends at a reduced price to our customers. They were good wines and we would have kept them on if they were still available and it seemed that they were all sold in no time at all and when I saw how fast they were going, I held on to a few bottles as gifts for some of our customers.
We subscribe to Harpers, the wine and spirits trade magazine and they always get hold of it as soon as it comes in. They read over everything, take in what’s written about the wines – they’re really teaching themselves about wine. So on Monday they both go for their first course at WSET and they’re both looking forward to it. They’ve already been so good at it, I can only imagine what they’ll be like once they’ve gone on the course. I think they’ll want to carry on to the next level, but we’ll see.
Our chefs have given me their first draft of our 22nd birthday tasting menu. I think it’s about 40% there, but thought I would share it with you and if anyone has comments, please post them to the blog. Of course, customers can order from these specials as they normally do, choosing whatever dishes they want, but we’ll also offer the entire specials menu as a tasting of each dish.
As I said last time, we’re celebrating for the entire month of July and are sending out £22 gift vouchers to all the customers on our mailing list. But we’ll also give vouchers to new customers who come in to dine and they can use the voucher on their next visit.
TESTING MENU FOR JULY
STARTERS
Green spice marinated guinea fowl tikka with cucumber and garlic salsa
Indian style crab spring roll with coriander and ginger sauce
Lamb pattice stuffed with Iranian dates
A tangy combination of potatoes with crispy flour pancake
MAINS
Smoked skewer of lamb mince wrapped with brown thread
Chicken cooked with yoghurt, green chilli and cardamom
Kashmiri style ox tail rogan josh tempered ratanjoyt
Lotus flower, cottage cheese and green peas cooked with creamy tomato sauce
SIDES
Yellow moong dal tempered with cumin seed and clarified butter
Sweet corn and baby corn with spinach and coconut
DESSERTS
Pounded rice pudding with Alphonso mango
Rose petal crème caramel
What do you think?
There are some additions I want to make to this menu, like patraani machi – a classic Parsi wedding dish of firm white fish fillets with coriander and mint chutney steamed in a banana leaf. It’s on our specials this month – we make it with turbot and it’s very popular - almost as popular as the black cod dish from our Rajasthani menu, which was our most popular specials dish ever. That was made with a mustard seed sauce and mustard mash and it was so good I could eat it every day and never get bored.
And whatever we might change, the dori kebab will definitely be on the menu. This is a dish devised for the Nawabs of Lucknow. It’s a bit like gilauti kebab – finely minced lamb patties tenderised with green papaya. Dori kebab is shaped like a seekh kebab but comes on a square profile skewer, wrapped in string and to serve it you pull out the string to release it from the skewer. It will make a nice bit of tableside service. One other dessert I want to add is sugarcane and ginger sorbet – we have someone who makes sorbets and ice creams (like our chikoo ice cream) for us and he also makes for a lot of good Indian restaurants, like Benares. I think it will be very refreshing and cleanse the mouth between the main courses and the other desserts.
Well, thanks for stopping by and hope you’ll come back for a look next week.
l
Sometimes you have to take a long view of things and just wait and work patiently. That’s how it’s been for our two wine champions, Arjun and Rupom. Way back in March when we were trying out wines to go with our Rajasthani festival menu, Peter McCombie MW (our wine consultant) said that for some people, the idea of a sommelier is a bit intimidating and that he liked the idea of a wine champion. This is someone who is interested in wine and how it works with food, someone who can talk with customers about the flavours and how they will best work together.
For many of our staff, who are Muslim, this isn’t really practical, but fortunately for us, Arjun and Rupom were really enthusiastic about combining wine and food and – as Hindus – drinking wine is not a religious problem for them. Peter suggested that the Wine and Spirit Education Trust courses would be good to help them along and make them feel more confident in talking with customers.
Since then, they’ve really taken hold of their role as our wine champions. We had quite a bit of wine from our old list that was no longer available from our suppliers. But there were mostly odd bottles and suppliers will only take back whole cases, so we thought to sell them as bin ends at a reduced price to our customers. They were good wines and we would have kept them on if they were still available and it seemed that they were all sold in no time at all and when I saw how fast they were going, I held on to a few bottles as gifts for some of our customers.
We subscribe to Harpers, the wine and spirits trade magazine and they always get hold of it as soon as it comes in. They read over everything, take in what’s written about the wines – they’re really teaching themselves about wine. So on Monday they both go for their first course at WSET and they’re both looking forward to it. They’ve already been so good at it, I can only imagine what they’ll be like once they’ve gone on the course. I think they’ll want to carry on to the next level, but we’ll see.
Our chefs have given me their first draft of our 22nd birthday tasting menu. I think it’s about 40% there, but thought I would share it with you and if anyone has comments, please post them to the blog. Of course, customers can order from these specials as they normally do, choosing whatever dishes they want, but we’ll also offer the entire specials menu as a tasting of each dish.
As I said last time, we’re celebrating for the entire month of July and are sending out £22 gift vouchers to all the customers on our mailing list. But we’ll also give vouchers to new customers who come in to dine and they can use the voucher on their next visit.
TESTING MENU FOR JULY
STARTERS
Green spice marinated guinea fowl tikka with cucumber and garlic salsa
Indian style crab spring roll with coriander and ginger sauce
Lamb pattice stuffed with Iranian dates
A tangy combination of potatoes with crispy flour pancake
MAINS
Smoked skewer of lamb mince wrapped with brown thread
Chicken cooked with yoghurt, green chilli and cardamom
Kashmiri style ox tail rogan josh tempered ratanjoyt
Lotus flower, cottage cheese and green peas cooked with creamy tomato sauce
SIDES
Yellow moong dal tempered with cumin seed and clarified butter
Sweet corn and baby corn with spinach and coconut
DESSERTS
Pounded rice pudding with Alphonso mango
Rose petal crème caramel
What do you think?
There are some additions I want to make to this menu, like patraani machi – a classic Parsi wedding dish of firm white fish fillets with coriander and mint chutney steamed in a banana leaf. It’s on our specials this month – we make it with turbot and it’s very popular - almost as popular as the black cod dish from our Rajasthani menu, which was our most popular specials dish ever. That was made with a mustard seed sauce and mustard mash and it was so good I could eat it every day and never get bored.
And whatever we might change, the dori kebab will definitely be on the menu. This is a dish devised for the Nawabs of Lucknow. It’s a bit like gilauti kebab – finely minced lamb patties tenderised with green papaya. Dori kebab is shaped like a seekh kebab but comes on a square profile skewer, wrapped in string and to serve it you pull out the string to release it from the skewer. It will make a nice bit of tableside service. One other dessert I want to add is sugarcane and ginger sorbet – we have someone who makes sorbets and ice creams (like our chikoo ice cream) for us and he also makes for a lot of good Indian restaurants, like Benares. I think it will be very refreshing and cleanse the mouth between the main courses and the other desserts.
Well, thanks for stopping by and hope you’ll come back for a look next week.
l
Thursday, 7 June 2007
Cooking with gas
There’s something I’ve been thinking about for some time and wanted to share with you. We’ve been getting such good response on our food and so many kind words for our chefs and we’re really pleased about that and thanks to all our customers for saying so.
But, as I say, that made me think about customers coming into our kitchen for cooking lessons. I know that at Café Spice Namaste Cyrus Todiwala does cooking lessons and they also offer cooking lessons at Chutney Mary and Andy Varma, the chef/owner of Vama, also offers cookery classes. So we’ve been talking about this at Babur.
We’d like people who come to our cooking class to be able to be as hands on as possible because you always learn and remember better by doing. So for preparing mise en place and cooking, people in the class will be guided by our chefs. From our other restaurant, Planet Spice, chef Raj Pandey has already done classes so he might lead the class but our Babur chefs, Jiwan and Pravin, will also be there and they can also guide customers through the learning.
The classes would have to be on a day when the kitchen isn’t so busy because our kitchen just isn’t big enough for extra people at busy times. We were thinking about Monday afternoons. Then, after the class was over and the food cooked, people in the class would sit down to eat what they had prepared. Any comments?
Also, we’ve been trying to come up with a name for our Babur takeaway. We’ve tried to think of an alternative to ‘takeaway’ and then thought that our customers might be able to help. So if you have any ideas about this, please post a comment or send us an email. We’ll give a dinner for two to the person who suggests a name we use.
And lastly, this week’s recipe for Tawa-Griddled Pomfret comes from another of our chefs, Sheik Unus. We want everyone to get a bit of the spotlight and hope you enjoy his recipe.
TAWA POMFRET
(Serves 4)
Ingredients:
4 small pomfret (about 150gm – 170gm)
For the marination:
2 Tbsps ginger garlic paste
juice of 2 lemons
salt to taste
2 tsp ajwain (carom) seeds
1 tsp red chilli powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
100ml mustard oil
1 tsp cumin powder, briefly roasted in a pan
1 tsp gram flour
Method:
Wash the fish in cold water, pat dry then make three deep incisions on each side of the fish.
Mix all the ingredients for marination in a bowl.
Apply this marination to the fish and leave it for 30 minutes.
Heat one deep frying pan put some mustard oil then add the fish one by one to the pan and carefully cook about three to four minutes per side.
Remove from pan and serve hot.
But, as I say, that made me think about customers coming into our kitchen for cooking lessons. I know that at Café Spice Namaste Cyrus Todiwala does cooking lessons and they also offer cooking lessons at Chutney Mary and Andy Varma, the chef/owner of Vama, also offers cookery classes. So we’ve been talking about this at Babur.
We’d like people who come to our cooking class to be able to be as hands on as possible because you always learn and remember better by doing. So for preparing mise en place and cooking, people in the class will be guided by our chefs. From our other restaurant, Planet Spice, chef Raj Pandey has already done classes so he might lead the class but our Babur chefs, Jiwan and Pravin, will also be there and they can also guide customers through the learning.
The classes would have to be on a day when the kitchen isn’t so busy because our kitchen just isn’t big enough for extra people at busy times. We were thinking about Monday afternoons. Then, after the class was over and the food cooked, people in the class would sit down to eat what they had prepared. Any comments?
Also, we’ve been trying to come up with a name for our Babur takeaway. We’ve tried to think of an alternative to ‘takeaway’ and then thought that our customers might be able to help. So if you have any ideas about this, please post a comment or send us an email. We’ll give a dinner for two to the person who suggests a name we use.
And lastly, this week’s recipe for Tawa-Griddled Pomfret comes from another of our chefs, Sheik Unus. We want everyone to get a bit of the spotlight and hope you enjoy his recipe.
TAWA POMFRET
(Serves 4)
Ingredients:
4 small pomfret (about 150gm – 170gm)
For the marination:
2 Tbsps ginger garlic paste
juice of 2 lemons
salt to taste
2 tsp ajwain (carom) seeds
1 tsp red chilli powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
100ml mustard oil
1 tsp cumin powder, briefly roasted in a pan
1 tsp gram flour
Method:
Wash the fish in cold water, pat dry then make three deep incisions on each side of the fish.
Mix all the ingredients for marination in a bowl.
Apply this marination to the fish and leave it for 30 minutes.
Heat one deep frying pan put some mustard oil then add the fish one by one to the pan and carefully cook about three to four minutes per side.
Remove from pan and serve hot.
Monday, 21 May 2007
Cobra Good Curry Guide
Well, we had a good surprise this week. On Wednesday, our copy of Pat Chapman’s Cobra Good Curry Guide 2007 arrived and there on the front cover was a photo of Babur - our restaurant. It was a picture of the sandstone wall in the rear dining room. Besides that, there were photos of our dishes throughout the inside as well.
Our review is on pages 140-141 with a photo of our head chef, Jiwan, so he’s been showing off to all his friends, telling them to buy a copy of the guide. We were nominated for London Regional Restaurant – Mint Leaf won the category - but we were pleased to be nominated and went along to the awards a few months ago at the London Hilton on Park Lane. So it really was a surprise to see our photo on the cover.
Babur’s 22nd birthday is coming up in July and we’ve started working on it. We’ve been trying to come up with as many ideas as we can and this is what we’ve come up with so far. There aren’t many restaurants going for 22 years and we’re still going strong. In fact, we’re doing better than we ever have since we redesigned the restaurant.
We’re celebrating our birthday for the entire month of July. Normally when you see someone for their birthday, you bring them a gift. But I thought we would do something different and give our customers a gift instead, so we’re going to send a gift voucher for £22 to each customer on our data base. After all, our customers have been looking after us for 22 years so it’s time we look after them.
We’re coming up with a celebration menu for the whole month of July. I think we’re going to try something we’ve never done before at Babur - a tasting menu – so everyone can try all of our celebration menu. I think we’ll have four starters and three mains. We’ll split starters between the different areas of the kitchen so they don’t get overloaded; one will be pan-based, one from the tandoor and one fried and we’ll also serve a biryani (maybe our seafood biryani). We’ll serve the starters one at a time and mains together. Or we might serve some of the mains separately. That way, we can offer the option of wines matched to each dish – something else we’ve never done. Maybe we’ll offer a fish first, then chicken and a lamb dish. Then there’ll be three miniature desserts – maybe our beetroot samosas and tandoori pineapple.
Post comments to the blog if you have suggestions of what se should do to celebrate our 22nd birthday.
Even though we’re in May, we’re starting to plan our Christmas decorations. I have to admit, I got our decorations wrong last year – we did what we used to before our renovation – and a few of our customers complained to me that the decorations were letting the restaurant down. I don’t want to make that mistake again, so I got in contact with a few companies I saw in Caterer & Hotelkeeper – they had a review of Christmas decorators a little while back. This year we’re going to have the best decorations in our area.
And just before I go, I wanted to thank Jane Savage who said such nice things about my brother Enam’s Beef Xacutti recipe in her letter to Terry Durack (see previous posting). My brother, Enam, gave me the recipe just as I was about to log off, so here's Enam Rahman's recipe for Beef Xacutti. And thanks to all of you for stopping by to read this.
BEEF XACUTTI
(Serves four people)
Ingredients :
4 beef ribs
For Paste:
8 green chillies
15gm star anise
10gm peppercorn
10gm bay leaf
10gm black cardamom
15gm green cardamom
20gm coriander seed
10gm cumin seed
5 whole dry red chillies
5gm fenugreek seed
½ No. Nutmeg
5gm poppy seed
20gm dessicated coconut
For Sauce:
2Tbls coconut oil
2 red onions (finely chopped)
4 tomatoes (roughly chopped)
1Tbls ginger/garlic paste
1Tsp cider vinegar
Salt to taste
1Tsp turmeric powder
2Tsp red chilli powder
½ Tsp coriander powder
½ Tsp cumin powder
1Tbls tamarind puree
METHOD
Gently dry roast all the ingredients for the paste in a pan until you smell the aroma of spices, then keep it aside to cool. Put all the roasted spices in a mortar or mixer and grind, then add a mimimal amount of water to make a paste.
For sauce : Put a deep frying pan on the stove with vegetable oil then red onion, stir it for a while and when it becomes light brown in colour then add ginger garlic paste and keep stirring.
Add tomato and after a while add all the powdered spices and keep stirring for one mintue more.
Now add the prepared paste and bhunao (cook on a moderate heat until the liquid is mostly gone and the oil begins to separate) for a while then add beef ribs and let it cook on a slow flame till the meat gets very tender. Finish with cider vinegar and tamarind puree. Allow to rest for a moment or two and serve with steamed basmati rice.
Our review is on pages 140-141 with a photo of our head chef, Jiwan, so he’s been showing off to all his friends, telling them to buy a copy of the guide. We were nominated for London Regional Restaurant – Mint Leaf won the category - but we were pleased to be nominated and went along to the awards a few months ago at the London Hilton on Park Lane. So it really was a surprise to see our photo on the cover.
Babur’s 22nd birthday is coming up in July and we’ve started working on it. We’ve been trying to come up with as many ideas as we can and this is what we’ve come up with so far. There aren’t many restaurants going for 22 years and we’re still going strong. In fact, we’re doing better than we ever have since we redesigned the restaurant.
We’re celebrating our birthday for the entire month of July. Normally when you see someone for their birthday, you bring them a gift. But I thought we would do something different and give our customers a gift instead, so we’re going to send a gift voucher for £22 to each customer on our data base. After all, our customers have been looking after us for 22 years so it’s time we look after them.
We’re coming up with a celebration menu for the whole month of July. I think we’re going to try something we’ve never done before at Babur - a tasting menu – so everyone can try all of our celebration menu. I think we’ll have four starters and three mains. We’ll split starters between the different areas of the kitchen so they don’t get overloaded; one will be pan-based, one from the tandoor and one fried and we’ll also serve a biryani (maybe our seafood biryani). We’ll serve the starters one at a time and mains together. Or we might serve some of the mains separately. That way, we can offer the option of wines matched to each dish – something else we’ve never done. Maybe we’ll offer a fish first, then chicken and a lamb dish. Then there’ll be three miniature desserts – maybe our beetroot samosas and tandoori pineapple.
Post comments to the blog if you have suggestions of what se should do to celebrate our 22nd birthday.
Even though we’re in May, we’re starting to plan our Christmas decorations. I have to admit, I got our decorations wrong last year – we did what we used to before our renovation – and a few of our customers complained to me that the decorations were letting the restaurant down. I don’t want to make that mistake again, so I got in contact with a few companies I saw in Caterer & Hotelkeeper – they had a review of Christmas decorators a little while back. This year we’re going to have the best decorations in our area.
And just before I go, I wanted to thank Jane Savage who said such nice things about my brother Enam’s Beef Xacutti recipe in her letter to Terry Durack (see previous posting). My brother, Enam, gave me the recipe just as I was about to log off, so here's Enam Rahman's recipe for Beef Xacutti. And thanks to all of you for stopping by to read this.
BEEF XACUTTI
(Serves four people)
Ingredients :
4 beef ribs
For Paste:
8 green chillies
15gm star anise
10gm peppercorn
10gm bay leaf
10gm black cardamom
15gm green cardamom
20gm coriander seed
10gm cumin seed
5 whole dry red chillies
5gm fenugreek seed
½ No. Nutmeg
5gm poppy seed
20gm dessicated coconut
For Sauce:
2Tbls coconut oil
2 red onions (finely chopped)
4 tomatoes (roughly chopped)
1Tbls ginger/garlic paste
1Tsp cider vinegar
Salt to taste
1Tsp turmeric powder
2Tsp red chilli powder
½ Tsp coriander powder
½ Tsp cumin powder
1Tbls tamarind puree
METHOD
Gently dry roast all the ingredients for the paste in a pan until you smell the aroma of spices, then keep it aside to cool. Put all the roasted spices in a mortar or mixer and grind, then add a mimimal amount of water to make a paste.
For sauce : Put a deep frying pan on the stove with vegetable oil then red onion, stir it for a while and when it becomes light brown in colour then add ginger garlic paste and keep stirring.
Add tomato and after a while add all the powdered spices and keep stirring for one mintue more.
Now add the prepared paste and bhunao (cook on a moderate heat until the liquid is mostly gone and the oil begins to separate) for a while then add beef ribs and let it cook on a slow flame till the meat gets very tender. Finish with cider vinegar and tamarind puree. Allow to rest for a moment or two and serve with steamed basmati rice.
Thursday, 10 May 2007
Upper Crust
As we’ve been working on our new specials for the month, the latest copy of Upper Crust magazine arrived from India. I like to keep up with new developments in Indian cooking and it helps with ideas for the menu. It seems that new recipes coming from India are using local ingredients in new ways. I was glad to see this because this is the way our menu is developing.
We introduced our new specials from Monday; the last month’s specials were on for more than four weeks so we changed them on Monday instead of Thursday as we would usually do. (That also explains why I was late with this posting – sorry.)
As I was saying last time, we’ve got some interesting summer dishes and what surprised me the most was how much I enjoyed one of the salad starters, our Sikandari salad. Our head chef, Jiwan, started with the idea of a Caesar salad, but made with missi roti instead of croutons, roasted paneer, pomegranate seeds, tomato and mustard cress, dressed with mint/coriander and pomegranate extract. And, like I said before, I was glad to see that we’re using Indian ingredients in new ways, just like they are in India. I also liked another new starter, crispy-fried soft shell crab with green papaya and mango salsa; the cool, sweet, acid fruit is spiked with a little green chilli and it’s so refreshing with the crispy crab.
For the main courses we have a Raj-style lamb knuckle curry; a masala pan-seared organic chicken breast (which is coated with dark-meat chicken mince) which we serve with parwal rice (parwal is also called potol) and that’s been popular so far. Being Bengali, I’m glad that the seafood biryani is selling well – it’s made with tiger prawns, monkfish and mussels cooked with shell on and it’s served with boondi raita (a crunchy gram flour savoury); customers seem to like the masala baked beans with it to have a wet dish along with the biryani – it’s a bit like dal makhni but without cream and it has wild mushroom in it.
When Jiwan served me the new vegetarian main, I thought the portion of spicy apricot-stuffed jackfruit was a bit small, but the gram flour pancake it was really very filling and I don’t think I could have had any more. This dish has been really popular with our customers from West Indian backgrounds because both the West and the East Indies like jackfruit. But I have to say that in Sylhet we never had jackfruit as a savoury dish but as a sweet only.
I was working on the bank holiday weekend and one of our customers walked in with a copy of the Independent on Sunday and asked if I knew we were mentioned in Terry Durack’s Second Helpings column from his mailbag. Jane Savage wrote in to him saying very nice things about us and particularly about our beef xacutti. Thank you, Jane. And just for you, we’re going to post the recipe in the next blog. But for now we already had our first-ever dessert recipe and it’s from our new main menu, Beetroot samosas with banana compote. Our head chef, Jiwan, is very fond of beetroot (he also makes them into Bengali-style cutlets) and has been using them in a few sweet things to go with desserts. I hope you enjoy it and thanks for stopping by.
BEET ROOT SAMOSAS WITH BANANA COMPOTE
INGRIDIENTS
800g beetroot
1L milk
200g khoya
200g sugar
1 tsp green cardamom powder
20g sultanas
6 Tbsps ghee
4 spring roll sheets
Oil for deep frying
METHOD
Wash, scrape and grate the beetroot. Clean and soak the raisins for 20 minutes. Grate the khoya in granules. Heat the ghee in a karahi fry the raisins and take out. Stir in the grated beetroot. Cook, stirring, till they become a darker colour. Add the milk and cook till milk evaporates and the mixture is thick. Keep stirring. Halfway through, return raisins to the karahi. Add the khoya and mix thoroughly. Sprinkle green cardamom powder; spread the mixture out on a baking tray and leave to cool. This is beetroot halwa.
Take a spring roll sheet and cut into 2 strips 3 inches wide. Place a spoonful of beetroot halwa near the top of each one, then take one corner of the sheet and fold it over the beetroot mixture in a triangular shape. Continue folding until you reach the end of the strip and have a neat triangle. Brush the edges with a little water to seal. Repeat with the remaining mixture and sheet to make 8 samosas.
Deep fry the samosas in hot oil for about 3 minutes until golden brown, then drain on kitchen paper. Serve 2 samosas per person with banana compote.
BANANA COMPOTE
2 Tbsps sugar
100 ml double cream
1 sliced, ripe banana
METHOD
Melt the sugar in a pan.
When it is little white in colour but all the sugar grains melt then add sliced banana and double cream, cook, stirring until the banana dissolves into the liquid, giving a consistency like clotted cream.
Remove from heat and allow to cool.
We introduced our new specials from Monday; the last month’s specials were on for more than four weeks so we changed them on Monday instead of Thursday as we would usually do. (That also explains why I was late with this posting – sorry.)
As I was saying last time, we’ve got some interesting summer dishes and what surprised me the most was how much I enjoyed one of the salad starters, our Sikandari salad. Our head chef, Jiwan, started with the idea of a Caesar salad, but made with missi roti instead of croutons, roasted paneer, pomegranate seeds, tomato and mustard cress, dressed with mint/coriander and pomegranate extract. And, like I said before, I was glad to see that we’re using Indian ingredients in new ways, just like they are in India. I also liked another new starter, crispy-fried soft shell crab with green papaya and mango salsa; the cool, sweet, acid fruit is spiked with a little green chilli and it’s so refreshing with the crispy crab.
For the main courses we have a Raj-style lamb knuckle curry; a masala pan-seared organic chicken breast (which is coated with dark-meat chicken mince) which we serve with parwal rice (parwal is also called potol) and that’s been popular so far. Being Bengali, I’m glad that the seafood biryani is selling well – it’s made with tiger prawns, monkfish and mussels cooked with shell on and it’s served with boondi raita (a crunchy gram flour savoury); customers seem to like the masala baked beans with it to have a wet dish along with the biryani – it’s a bit like dal makhni but without cream and it has wild mushroom in it.
When Jiwan served me the new vegetarian main, I thought the portion of spicy apricot-stuffed jackfruit was a bit small, but the gram flour pancake it was really very filling and I don’t think I could have had any more. This dish has been really popular with our customers from West Indian backgrounds because both the West and the East Indies like jackfruit. But I have to say that in Sylhet we never had jackfruit as a savoury dish but as a sweet only.
I was working on the bank holiday weekend and one of our customers walked in with a copy of the Independent on Sunday and asked if I knew we were mentioned in Terry Durack’s Second Helpings column from his mailbag. Jane Savage wrote in to him saying very nice things about us and particularly about our beef xacutti. Thank you, Jane. And just for you, we’re going to post the recipe in the next blog. But for now we already had our first-ever dessert recipe and it’s from our new main menu, Beetroot samosas with banana compote. Our head chef, Jiwan, is very fond of beetroot (he also makes them into Bengali-style cutlets) and has been using them in a few sweet things to go with desserts. I hope you enjoy it and thanks for stopping by.
BEET ROOT SAMOSAS WITH BANANA COMPOTE
INGRIDIENTS
800g beetroot
1L milk
200g khoya
200g sugar
1 tsp green cardamom powder
20g sultanas
6 Tbsps ghee
4 spring roll sheets
Oil for deep frying
METHOD
Wash, scrape and grate the beetroot. Clean and soak the raisins for 20 minutes. Grate the khoya in granules. Heat the ghee in a karahi fry the raisins and take out. Stir in the grated beetroot. Cook, stirring, till they become a darker colour. Add the milk and cook till milk evaporates and the mixture is thick. Keep stirring. Halfway through, return raisins to the karahi. Add the khoya and mix thoroughly. Sprinkle green cardamom powder; spread the mixture out on a baking tray and leave to cool. This is beetroot halwa.
Take a spring roll sheet and cut into 2 strips 3 inches wide. Place a spoonful of beetroot halwa near the top of each one, then take one corner of the sheet and fold it over the beetroot mixture in a triangular shape. Continue folding until you reach the end of the strip and have a neat triangle. Brush the edges with a little water to seal. Repeat with the remaining mixture and sheet to make 8 samosas.
Deep fry the samosas in hot oil for about 3 minutes until golden brown, then drain on kitchen paper. Serve 2 samosas per person with banana compote.
BANANA COMPOTE
2 Tbsps sugar
100 ml double cream
1 sliced, ripe banana
METHOD
Melt the sugar in a pan.
When it is little white in colour but all the sugar grains melt then add sliced banana and double cream, cook, stirring until the banana dissolves into the liquid, giving a consistency like clotted cream.
Remove from heat and allow to cool.
Sunday, 29 April 2007
Tiffin Club Cup
Hi there. Hope you had a good week. Sorry this is a day or two late going up. I’m still trying to get the discipline of sitting down to write for the same day each week, but I’ll get there.
No trouble figuring out to write about this week. We had an exciting Tuesday evening at the launch event for this year’s Tiffin Club Cup at Moti Mahal in Covent Garden, organised by Keith Vaz MP. The Tiffin Club is a group of MPs who like Indian food and the Cup goes to the MPs’ favourite Indian restaurant. The way it works is that each MP nominates their favourite restaurant from their own constituency and we were nominated by our MP, Joan Ruddock.
There must have been 40 MPs in the restaurant – I never saw so many in one room at a time. Anyway, the Tiffin Club Cup is in its second year and I’m confident we have a good chance of being shortlisted. Our MP, Joan Ruddock, said to me ‘I eat in lots of places and you’re still my favourite’. Other MPs also spoke to me and said they’ve had a takeaway from Babur.
There will be 10 shortlisted restaurants, chosen by the MPs. They’ll decide on the shortlist by making secret visits to all the restaurants nominated. The final 10 will be invited to cook in the House of Commons. So I’m waiting for our invitation to cook there.
Back at Babur, we’re still adjusting to the change of menu. We had sorbets from the last dessert list and didn’t know what to do with them, so one night our head chef Jivan sent them out between starter and main courses in tall skinny shot glasses as a palate cleanser. I think the customers liked it, especially as the weather has been quite warm.
Jivan was talking about new items for our menu – light dishes based on fish, seafood and salads. Like a Caesar salad but with slices of grilled paneer, small cubes of missi roti, whole tomatoes, chilli and coriander and mint relish mixed in with salad dressing. I made a meal out of it. I’m not a salad person but I liked it and finished it all. That will make my wife, Jasmine, happy. I think I will struggle a bit just like with selling wine with Indian food.
But light dishes, cold dishes, salads and street snacks from India are not highlighted enough in Indian restaurants. It’s always dishes being served hot. And yet there’s a big tradition of cold dishes like aloo chat and pappri chaat.
Jivan wanted to put up this recipe for coconut lamb, our most popular dish since we relaunched over a year ago. Our customers continue to like it and they know their food so it must be good.
Coconut lamb – serves 4 generously
Ingredients:
Vegetable oil
3 whole red chillies
small handful of curry leaves
1.2kg diced lamb
1 medium onion chopped
50g ginger paste
50g garlic paste
3g red chilli powder
3g turmeric
400g chopped tomato
85g desiccated coconut powder
15g curry powder
60g tamarind pulp
salt to taste
chopped coriander
Method:
Rinse lamb in cold running water and strain.
Heat oil in deep pan, add whole red chillies and curry leaves and stir for a few seconds.
Now add diced lamb and onions. Sear meat over low heat until both lamb and onions brown, stirring continuously. Add ginger and garlic pastes and cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Add red chilli powder and turmeric powder and stir for 30 seconds. Add chopped tomatoes and stir until liquid evaporates.
Add coconut powder and tamarind pulp and continue to stir for 5 to 10 minutes. Add approximately 750ml water (to cover), stir then cover the pan and simmer, stirring occasionally until lamb is tender, about 1 hour. Adjust seasoning as required and sprinkle with chopped coriander.
No trouble figuring out to write about this week. We had an exciting Tuesday evening at the launch event for this year’s Tiffin Club Cup at Moti Mahal in Covent Garden, organised by Keith Vaz MP. The Tiffin Club is a group of MPs who like Indian food and the Cup goes to the MPs’ favourite Indian restaurant. The way it works is that each MP nominates their favourite restaurant from their own constituency and we were nominated by our MP, Joan Ruddock.
There must have been 40 MPs in the restaurant – I never saw so many in one room at a time. Anyway, the Tiffin Club Cup is in its second year and I’m confident we have a good chance of being shortlisted. Our MP, Joan Ruddock, said to me ‘I eat in lots of places and you’re still my favourite’. Other MPs also spoke to me and said they’ve had a takeaway from Babur.
There will be 10 shortlisted restaurants, chosen by the MPs. They’ll decide on the shortlist by making secret visits to all the restaurants nominated. The final 10 will be invited to cook in the House of Commons. So I’m waiting for our invitation to cook there.
Back at Babur, we’re still adjusting to the change of menu. We had sorbets from the last dessert list and didn’t know what to do with them, so one night our head chef Jivan sent them out between starter and main courses in tall skinny shot glasses as a palate cleanser. I think the customers liked it, especially as the weather has been quite warm.
Jivan was talking about new items for our menu – light dishes based on fish, seafood and salads. Like a Caesar salad but with slices of grilled paneer, small cubes of missi roti, whole tomatoes, chilli and coriander and mint relish mixed in with salad dressing. I made a meal out of it. I’m not a salad person but I liked it and finished it all. That will make my wife, Jasmine, happy. I think I will struggle a bit just like with selling wine with Indian food.
But light dishes, cold dishes, salads and street snacks from India are not highlighted enough in Indian restaurants. It’s always dishes being served hot. And yet there’s a big tradition of cold dishes like aloo chat and pappri chaat.
Jivan wanted to put up this recipe for coconut lamb, our most popular dish since we relaunched over a year ago. Our customers continue to like it and they know their food so it must be good.
Coconut lamb – serves 4 generously
Ingredients:
Vegetable oil
3 whole red chillies
small handful of curry leaves
1.2kg diced lamb
1 medium onion chopped
50g ginger paste
50g garlic paste
3g red chilli powder
3g turmeric
400g chopped tomato
85g desiccated coconut powder
15g curry powder
60g tamarind pulp
salt to taste
chopped coriander
Method:
Rinse lamb in cold running water and strain.
Heat oil in deep pan, add whole red chillies and curry leaves and stir for a few seconds.
Now add diced lamb and onions. Sear meat over low heat until both lamb and onions brown, stirring continuously. Add ginger and garlic pastes and cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Add red chilli powder and turmeric powder and stir for 30 seconds. Add chopped tomatoes and stir until liquid evaporates.
Add coconut powder and tamarind pulp and continue to stir for 5 to 10 minutes. Add approximately 750ml water (to cover), stir then cover the pan and simmer, stirring occasionally until lamb is tender, about 1 hour. Adjust seasoning as required and sprinkle with chopped coriander.
Sunday, 22 April 2007
Bit late but getting better
I know I promised to have a new posting up each week and I’m a few days late. Sorry. But it’s getting better and I’ll keep trying.
When I was about to sit down and write this, I asked the guys in the restaurant what I should write about this time and everyone had plenty to say.
This year for the first time we got into the Square Meal guide and we felt very honoured by being included. It felt like an achievement. Then we were wondering what to do with the window sticker. We wanted people to know we were in the guide and in the old Babur we used to put everything up in the window. But now in the new Babur with big plate glass and such a beautiful restaurant to see inside, we didn’t want to block the view. So we found a menu stand and put all our awards and certificates from all the restaurant guides on that. It’s in the glass corner where the hat stand with the turban was during our Rajasthani festival.
Now I’d really like us to get in the Michelin Guide – not as a star but in the good value eating section, like Sarkhel’s in Southfields is. In the past I wouldn’t have even said it, but now that our restaurant has been rebuilt and redecorated and our food has got better, I think we’re at that level.
We started our new wine list while the festival was on and it was hard to get used to it at first, harder than the last change was. But we’re getting used to it now. And since Peter McCombie came last for our food and wine matching, some of the guys have got really excited about talking with customers on our wines.
So much so that two guys from Babur, Arjun and Rupom, are going to the Wine and Spirit Education Trust level 1 course on 18 June. The course is so popular this was the first day available. They’re doing the hospitality course – it’s a crash course and at the end of the day they are expected to do a written exam. On the entry level course they’ll do tasting, service, matching of food and wine, grape characteristics. And Rupom and Arjun have been so good talking with the customers about wine, I think it’s well worth the £140 for each of them.
We still have some of the wines that were on the last list. Our suppliers would take them back but the bookkeeping is so complicated I’d rather not do it. After we talked, we decided to sell them at a discount to our customers as bin ends. We reduced the prices so they’d sell fast because we’ve got a storage problem – there are 68 different wines on our list and we still have 20 wines from the old list. So the Negresco had been just over £20 but we reduced it to 18.50 and a table had a couple of bottles of it. We put it on tent cards on every table. We’re also going to open a new bottle of white and red every day to offer small tastings and if our customers like it they can have it by the glass.
Customers appreciate that the waiters can talk on wine and they have better image of Babur. We’ve always tried to offer good value to our customers and wine is an important part of their enjoyment, so I’ve always tried to keep our markup low – the average percentage markup is 65% but the average across the restaurant business is 90% to 150% and some do 220%. We’re trying to get people away from the idea that Indian food only goes with beer – more people now understand that. The guys on the floor have found that talking about wine breaks the ice and makes customers feel a bit easier – someone is talking to us. And it builds the waiters confidence.
Fortunately we get a lot of appreciative comments on service – service and food are running neck and neck, according to ratings on london-eating.co.uk, which is entirely based on real customers own ratings. It gives Babur 9.6 for food (out of 10) and 9.2 for service; atmosphere and value for money gets 9.1 its – hard to find other restaurants that achieve over 9 in all four categories.
That’s it for now – got to get back to the restaurant. I hope to have the next entry up before the end of the week. Thanks for stopping by and take a look next week if you can.
When I was about to sit down and write this, I asked the guys in the restaurant what I should write about this time and everyone had plenty to say.
This year for the first time we got into the Square Meal guide and we felt very honoured by being included. It felt like an achievement. Then we were wondering what to do with the window sticker. We wanted people to know we were in the guide and in the old Babur we used to put everything up in the window. But now in the new Babur with big plate glass and such a beautiful restaurant to see inside, we didn’t want to block the view. So we found a menu stand and put all our awards and certificates from all the restaurant guides on that. It’s in the glass corner where the hat stand with the turban was during our Rajasthani festival.
Now I’d really like us to get in the Michelin Guide – not as a star but in the good value eating section, like Sarkhel’s in Southfields is. In the past I wouldn’t have even said it, but now that our restaurant has been rebuilt and redecorated and our food has got better, I think we’re at that level.
We started our new wine list while the festival was on and it was hard to get used to it at first, harder than the last change was. But we’re getting used to it now. And since Peter McCombie came last for our food and wine matching, some of the guys have got really excited about talking with customers on our wines.
So much so that two guys from Babur, Arjun and Rupom, are going to the Wine and Spirit Education Trust level 1 course on 18 June. The course is so popular this was the first day available. They’re doing the hospitality course – it’s a crash course and at the end of the day they are expected to do a written exam. On the entry level course they’ll do tasting, service, matching of food and wine, grape characteristics. And Rupom and Arjun have been so good talking with the customers about wine, I think it’s well worth the £140 for each of them.
We still have some of the wines that were on the last list. Our suppliers would take them back but the bookkeeping is so complicated I’d rather not do it. After we talked, we decided to sell them at a discount to our customers as bin ends. We reduced the prices so they’d sell fast because we’ve got a storage problem – there are 68 different wines on our list and we still have 20 wines from the old list. So the Negresco had been just over £20 but we reduced it to 18.50 and a table had a couple of bottles of it. We put it on tent cards on every table. We’re also going to open a new bottle of white and red every day to offer small tastings and if our customers like it they can have it by the glass.
Customers appreciate that the waiters can talk on wine and they have better image of Babur. We’ve always tried to offer good value to our customers and wine is an important part of their enjoyment, so I’ve always tried to keep our markup low – the average percentage markup is 65% but the average across the restaurant business is 90% to 150% and some do 220%. We’re trying to get people away from the idea that Indian food only goes with beer – more people now understand that. The guys on the floor have found that talking about wine breaks the ice and makes customers feel a bit easier – someone is talking to us. And it builds the waiters confidence.
Fortunately we get a lot of appreciative comments on service – service and food are running neck and neck, according to ratings on london-eating.co.uk, which is entirely based on real customers own ratings. It gives Babur 9.6 for food (out of 10) and 9.2 for service; atmosphere and value for money gets 9.1 its – hard to find other restaurants that achieve over 9 in all four categories.
That’s it for now – got to get back to the restaurant. I hope to have the next entry up before the end of the week. Thanks for stopping by and take a look next week if you can.
Wednesday, 11 April 2007
Hi – it’s Emdad again. If anyone has been checking this site I really want to apologise for my lack of postings lately. I started this blog just as our festival of Rajasthani food started and I intended to keep posting throughout the festival to let you know how it was going. It went really well – so well that I never really got the chance to sit down and write about it. Maybe it was over ambitious to start two new things at once. No more excuses. From now on I’m going to post at least once a week, no matter what’s going on. Promise.
Like I was saying, the Colours of Rajasthan festival went really well, our best festival ever. That was really satisfying because I learned so much on the trip to Rajasthan and Jasmin and the kids have so many good memories of our trip together.
For the festival we did a temporary re-hang of the artwork, replacing Sian Lester’s suede and leather triptychs with some paintings, embroidery and printing blocks that I bought in Rajasthan. We had a lot of help with the re-hang from one of our best regular customers, Pippa Graber, who lives just a minute away, across the street from Babur. She was really a great help – she had some things framed, some paintings stretched, made suggestions about what to hang where and we couldn’t have done it without her. Thanks, Pippa.
I was going to post some pictures we took of re-hanging artwork on the restaurant’s digital camera. We got loads of good images, but that was a couple of months ago and when I went to download the camera, the images had been deleted. That was also a lesson to not leave things go for so long, so sorry for the lack of images to this post.
And we also did a food and wine matching session with Peter McCombie. He’s a Master of Wine (a world-recognised qualification from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust) and led the tasting. Peter made our first wine list and he also revised our list in time for the festival. He made what sounded very complicated – matching wine to each item on the festival menu – very simple and the staff all participated and really enjoyed themselves. Even though a lot of the staff are observant Muslims (like me) and don’t drink, we still understood a lot more about matching wine to food after Peter encouraged us to concentrate on the food and wine aromas. The guys who do drink got really enthusiastic and came up with good matches. They feel a lot more confident talking about wine with the customers now and have even said they’d like to take some wine courses (more on that to come) so I’m really happy about that.
Customers can tell when you’ve made and effort and are excited about what you’re doing and they respond to it. Every customer tried dishes from the festival menu and many of our regulars came three or four times just to be able to try everything. In fact, over half our total sales were from the festival menu. Our most popular dish was Lal maas, which means ‘red meat’ and during the seven weeks of the we sold 789 portions, our hottest selling item. It was so popular I think it will go back on to our main menu the next time we update it. And for anyone reading this who won’t be able to get here to try it, our sous chef, Pravin Kumar Gupta, wrote out the recipe which is at the end of this posting.
The next most popular main courses were Safed murgh (524 portions), chicken in white spices, yoghurt and green chilli; Bikaneri maachi (458 portions), black cod in spices and mustard oil with mustard mas; and Maas ki kadhi (312 portions), venison escallope in yoghurt and yellow chilli powder. The figures come from our EPOS system – I love technology when it works.
From the figures, customers liked the top three starters pretty much equally: Jodhpuri lamb chops sold 281 portions; Murgh ke sule (chicken kebabs) sold 271 portions and Sarson wali khargosh (rabbit tikka flavoured with mustard and yoghurt) sold 178 portions.
Business aside (and it was good), the festival worked really well for both the staff and our customers. Staff learned about food and wine matching and got more confident talking with our customers. Customers saw a new side of our cooking and service, everyone felt very positive and we’re planning our next festival and already looking forward to it.
Lal maas means ‘red meat’, from the Kashmiri red chilli powder that naturally colours the dish. We make our dishes traditionally but in this case we cut down the chilli heat even though it was still quite hot (as you can see from the recipe) and this was the hottest dish on the menu. Rajasthan is very hot and in common with other hot climates, the people of Rajasthan also like their food chilli hot: Pravin told me the Indian expression ‘iron cuts iron’, so hot food in hot climates. He also said that the good water in Rajasthan, which rises out of the sand, makes food particularly digestible.
For Lal maas, we used leg of lamb and to make it, ask your butcher to cut through the leg bone at the narrow end for the pieces on the bone. In India, however, the dish would be made with various cuts of lamb. Pravin learned this recipe while at Rajvilas in Jaipur and has since adapted it in much the same way home cooks do across Rajasthan. For this recipe, he did not include the method for smoking the clove masala as it needs real care and experience to avoid hurting oneself or starting a fire, but if any of you are curious about this, post a comment or send a message and we’ll post this for you.
Lal maas
1kg lamb (mix of meat on the bone and cubed boneless meat)
30 whole dried red chillies
150ml vegetable oil + 25ml for tempering
50g ginger/garlic paste
60g garlic (finely chopped)
200g onion finely sliced
100g tomato chopped
5g green cardamom
3g black cardamom
3g bay leaves
3g cinnamon stick
3g cumin seed
20g Kashmiri red chilli powder
15g coriander powder
5g turmeric powder
5g cloves
salt to taste
6 cups strong lamb stock
Heat oil in large handi or pot. Add all whole spices except cloves. Add onion and stir-fry until onions are golden brown. Add ginger/garlic paste and keep stir-frying one or two minutes, then add meat. Increase flame to high and stir-fry to sear for 7-8 minutes or until meat changes colour. Reduce flame to medium, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes.
Uncover and stir-fry until oil leaves the sides of the pot. Add all the powdered spices and continue to stir-fry for 2-3 minutes. Now add chopped tomatoes and again stir-fry until oil leaves the sides of the pot.
Add lamb stock, bring to a boil, reduce to low heat, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the meat is cooked and gravy is the consistency of a thin sauce. Remove from heat and adjust seasoning to taste.
For the tempering:
Heat the remaining oil in a frying pan, add cloves and chopped garlic, stir-frying over medium heat until light golden colour. Pour tempering over the meat and immediately cover with a lid. Allow to stand a few minutes and serve with steamed basmati rice.
Like I was saying, the Colours of Rajasthan festival went really well, our best festival ever. That was really satisfying because I learned so much on the trip to Rajasthan and Jasmin and the kids have so many good memories of our trip together.
For the festival we did a temporary re-hang of the artwork, replacing Sian Lester’s suede and leather triptychs with some paintings, embroidery and printing blocks that I bought in Rajasthan. We had a lot of help with the re-hang from one of our best regular customers, Pippa Graber, who lives just a minute away, across the street from Babur. She was really a great help – she had some things framed, some paintings stretched, made suggestions about what to hang where and we couldn’t have done it without her. Thanks, Pippa.
I was going to post some pictures we took of re-hanging artwork on the restaurant’s digital camera. We got loads of good images, but that was a couple of months ago and when I went to download the camera, the images had been deleted. That was also a lesson to not leave things go for so long, so sorry for the lack of images to this post.
And we also did a food and wine matching session with Peter McCombie. He’s a Master of Wine (a world-recognised qualification from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust) and led the tasting. Peter made our first wine list and he also revised our list in time for the festival. He made what sounded very complicated – matching wine to each item on the festival menu – very simple and the staff all participated and really enjoyed themselves. Even though a lot of the staff are observant Muslims (like me) and don’t drink, we still understood a lot more about matching wine to food after Peter encouraged us to concentrate on the food and wine aromas. The guys who do drink got really enthusiastic and came up with good matches. They feel a lot more confident talking about wine with the customers now and have even said they’d like to take some wine courses (more on that to come) so I’m really happy about that.
Customers can tell when you’ve made and effort and are excited about what you’re doing and they respond to it. Every customer tried dishes from the festival menu and many of our regulars came three or four times just to be able to try everything. In fact, over half our total sales were from the festival menu. Our most popular dish was Lal maas, which means ‘red meat’ and during the seven weeks of the we sold 789 portions, our hottest selling item. It was so popular I think it will go back on to our main menu the next time we update it. And for anyone reading this who won’t be able to get here to try it, our sous chef, Pravin Kumar Gupta, wrote out the recipe which is at the end of this posting.
The next most popular main courses were Safed murgh (524 portions), chicken in white spices, yoghurt and green chilli; Bikaneri maachi (458 portions), black cod in spices and mustard oil with mustard mas; and Maas ki kadhi (312 portions), venison escallope in yoghurt and yellow chilli powder. The figures come from our EPOS system – I love technology when it works.
From the figures, customers liked the top three starters pretty much equally: Jodhpuri lamb chops sold 281 portions; Murgh ke sule (chicken kebabs) sold 271 portions and Sarson wali khargosh (rabbit tikka flavoured with mustard and yoghurt) sold 178 portions.
Business aside (and it was good), the festival worked really well for both the staff and our customers. Staff learned about food and wine matching and got more confident talking with our customers. Customers saw a new side of our cooking and service, everyone felt very positive and we’re planning our next festival and already looking forward to it.
Lal maas means ‘red meat’, from the Kashmiri red chilli powder that naturally colours the dish. We make our dishes traditionally but in this case we cut down the chilli heat even though it was still quite hot (as you can see from the recipe) and this was the hottest dish on the menu. Rajasthan is very hot and in common with other hot climates, the people of Rajasthan also like their food chilli hot: Pravin told me the Indian expression ‘iron cuts iron’, so hot food in hot climates. He also said that the good water in Rajasthan, which rises out of the sand, makes food particularly digestible.
For Lal maas, we used leg of lamb and to make it, ask your butcher to cut through the leg bone at the narrow end for the pieces on the bone. In India, however, the dish would be made with various cuts of lamb. Pravin learned this recipe while at Rajvilas in Jaipur and has since adapted it in much the same way home cooks do across Rajasthan. For this recipe, he did not include the method for smoking the clove masala as it needs real care and experience to avoid hurting oneself or starting a fire, but if any of you are curious about this, post a comment or send a message and we’ll post this for you.
Lal maas
1kg lamb (mix of meat on the bone and cubed boneless meat)
30 whole dried red chillies
150ml vegetable oil + 25ml for tempering
50g ginger/garlic paste
60g garlic (finely chopped)
200g onion finely sliced
100g tomato chopped
5g green cardamom
3g black cardamom
3g bay leaves
3g cinnamon stick
3g cumin seed
20g Kashmiri red chilli powder
15g coriander powder
5g turmeric powder
5g cloves
salt to taste
6 cups strong lamb stock
Heat oil in large handi or pot. Add all whole spices except cloves. Add onion and stir-fry until onions are golden brown. Add ginger/garlic paste and keep stir-frying one or two minutes, then add meat. Increase flame to high and stir-fry to sear for 7-8 minutes or until meat changes colour. Reduce flame to medium, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes.
Uncover and stir-fry until oil leaves the sides of the pot. Add all the powdered spices and continue to stir-fry for 2-3 minutes. Now add chopped tomatoes and again stir-fry until oil leaves the sides of the pot.
Add lamb stock, bring to a boil, reduce to low heat, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the meat is cooked and gravy is the consistency of a thin sauce. Remove from heat and adjust seasoning to taste.
For the tempering:
Heat the remaining oil in a frying pan, add cloves and chopped garlic, stir-frying over medium heat until light golden colour. Pour tempering over the meat and immediately cover with a lid. Allow to stand a few minutes and serve with steamed basmati rice.
Wednesday, 7 February 2007
Busman’s holiday ... Grab the kids, Jasmin, we're off to Rajasthan!
With the family (and me) needing a break and a need to keep up with the new chefs, we hit the road in search of fun, food and learning ... If i've done this right, you should see our pictures below. I've uploaded them to flickr so if there's any you like, click them and you should be able to see a bigger version. Hope you like - we did.
So I'm going to start with *why* we all ended up travelling halfway round the world with notebooks and a camera.
It all started when we were renovating Babur. We hired two new chefs: our head chef, Jiwan Lal, and our sous chef, Praveen Kumar Gupta... both from the Oberoi Group of Hotels in India. Jiwan came to us from the Cecile Hotel in Simla, an old hill-station and fashionable resort (he tells me) while Praveen came from the Rajvilas in Jaipur (a 5* deluxe Oberoi hotel) and the more he talked about Jaipur, the state capital of Rajasthan, the more I wanted to go and see what the fuss was all about. Once I made the mistake of mentioning this to the family, the trip became inevitable.
Food = travel = learning.
I think it's easy to get caught up in the technicalities of food, cooking and kitchen practicalities when you're in this business but it’s fantastic on (rare) occasions to go and actually see where it comes from and get a sense of the soul and spirit of it. Food is about more than just ingredients, preparation and cooking times. Regional dishes exist for reasons of culture, practicalities, climate, history or strange twists of fate. That's why they're so great to explore. Every ingredient, every technique, even how you serve the dishes is steeped in history and reason. When you cook regional, you somehow connect to that regions past.
Anyway... our trip finally happened almost a year after we re-opened. It was a busy year but it was well worth the wait. After the usual packing/travel/airport hell, there was no stopping us when we arrived in Delhi with Pravin, who came with us to guide us through the cooking of Rajasthan so that we could bring our customers a good taste of some of the local food....
...But first, we did some window shopping.
Our first meals: a taste of India...
I had really wanted to go to a restaurant I had heard so much about: The Bukhara, at the Maurya Sheraton. I'll just say that for an establishment with such a reputation, it was disappointing. I was gutted. The family were happy to be on terra firma and eating. I supposed two out of three isn't bad for a new arrival.
Breakfast at our hotel (the Shangri La) was fantastic... idlis and sambhar, dosas, upma (spicy semolina porridge) tawa paratha and aloo pao (potatoes spiced with mustard seeds in a soft roll). Eating breakfast in a different country is always excellent and exciting. (Maybe bleary-eyed tourists waking up in the UK really do get the same rush at the sight of egg, bacon and fried slices). Once our breakfast woke us up, we realised it was time to take out the camera and go sightseeing.
Then finally, the sights...
First off, we saw Humayun's tomb (son of Babur and the second Mughal Emperor of India)... one of the first great buildings in the Mughal style. Then we went to the old part of Delhi to the Jami Masjid, built by Shah Jehan and the main mosque of Delhi. It faces the Red Fort (also built by Shah Jehan). Just behind the Jami Masjid the food vendors sell all kinds of things, like kebabs and pani puri and they're famous for selling biryani on a Friday after prayers. Good solid street cooking.
Last stop of the day was just south of Delhi to see the Qutab Minar complex. You can see the five-story minaret for miles around – it's over 70 metres tall and it was built in the 12th century. It was built by Maharajah Jai Singh II in 1728 and was painted a sort of pink when the Prince of Wales visited in 1860 (just like the Queen, everywhere he went smelled of fresh paint... he probably thought thats what the world smelt like.).
We got to Jaipur the next day, the famous Pink City of India.
Its incredible. Not only are the buildings pink, like the Hawa Mahal (Palace of the Winds – it's on the cover of the Lonely Planet guide to India) and the City Palace (busy Maharajah's don't have time to commute from the suburbs every day) , but the women and men wear pink too... and so do the elephants and the camels. Everywhere you look you see pink.
We started at the City Palace and decided to take a picture while we were still fresh. It's a maze of arcades and courtyards and really beautiful doorways like the Peacock Gate. Check out the pictures for the detail on it. It's the kind of astonishing craftsmanship that we used to be able to pull off but seem (the world over) to have pretty much forgotten how to do now.
Jai Singh also built the Jantar Mantar, which is an astronomical observatory – the buildings look like a lot of giant sundials and staircases and it makes you feel very small. Like a Lilliputian. Or like you've been hit by a shrink ray. After being suitably amazed and lost, we managed to see the back view of the Palace of the Winds on our way to the Amber Fort.
Getting lost abroad can also be fun.
The Amber Fort is just outside Jaipur and it's built on a range of hills. It's a steep climb up, but not if you book an elephant for the trip. Consider us booked - as tourists, there was no way we were going without an elephant.
The elephants aren't that fast, but I thought the way they rock from side to side was very soothing (although some some of the other visitors were complaining of seasickness). There was plenty to see and there was even the chance for some drive-by shopping, although the rush hour can cause some traffic snarl-ups.
It may be called a fort, but it looked more like a palace to me... After you get off your elephant (no small feat), you walk up this double-flight of stairs, and then you come out into a courtyard in front of the Ganesha Gate which is all made from inlaid, dyed plaster. It's too good a photo opportunity to resist and a great place to pause and find your feet again.
There's a lot to see and you could really just stop and stare at so many insanely beautiful things... like the elephant-headed columns and the mirrored ceilings and walls. And that's before you get on to the rooftop courtyard with the chatris where you can look out on to the hills all around you, with the walls of the fort along the ridge. You feel like you’re floating on the roof of the world and it’s all kind of Lost Horizons....
The monkeys by the way are fantastic. And excellent climbers. No elephant riding for them... They're also not pink. Well.. not yet. Sure it's only a matter of time before someone spots that and sorts them out though.
So I'm going to start with *why* we all ended up travelling halfway round the world with notebooks and a camera.
It all started when we were renovating Babur. We hired two new chefs: our head chef, Jiwan Lal, and our sous chef, Praveen Kumar Gupta... both from the Oberoi Group of Hotels in India. Jiwan came to us from the Cecile Hotel in Simla, an old hill-station and fashionable resort (he tells me) while Praveen came from the Rajvilas in Jaipur (a 5* deluxe Oberoi hotel) and the more he talked about Jaipur, the state capital of Rajasthan, the more I wanted to go and see what the fuss was all about. Once I made the mistake of mentioning this to the family, the trip became inevitable.
Food = travel = learning.
I think it's easy to get caught up in the technicalities of food, cooking and kitchen practicalities when you're in this business but it’s fantastic on (rare) occasions to go and actually see where it comes from and get a sense of the soul and spirit of it. Food is about more than just ingredients, preparation and cooking times. Regional dishes exist for reasons of culture, practicalities, climate, history or strange twists of fate. That's why they're so great to explore. Every ingredient, every technique, even how you serve the dishes is steeped in history and reason. When you cook regional, you somehow connect to that regions past.
Anyway... our trip finally happened almost a year after we re-opened. It was a busy year but it was well worth the wait. After the usual packing/travel/airport hell, there was no stopping us when we arrived in Delhi with Pravin, who came with us to guide us through the cooking of Rajasthan so that we could bring our customers a good taste of some of the local food....
...But first, we did some window shopping.
Our first meals: a taste of India...
I had really wanted to go to a restaurant I had heard so much about: The Bukhara, at the Maurya Sheraton. I'll just say that for an establishment with such a reputation, it was disappointing. I was gutted. The family were happy to be on terra firma and eating. I supposed two out of three isn't bad for a new arrival.
Breakfast at our hotel (the Shangri La) was fantastic... idlis and sambhar, dosas, upma (spicy semolina porridge) tawa paratha and aloo pao (potatoes spiced with mustard seeds in a soft roll). Eating breakfast in a different country is always excellent and exciting. (Maybe bleary-eyed tourists waking up in the UK really do get the same rush at the sight of egg, bacon and fried slices). Once our breakfast woke us up, we realised it was time to take out the camera and go sightseeing.
Then finally, the sights...
First off, we saw Humayun's tomb (son of Babur and the second Mughal Emperor of India)... one of the first great buildings in the Mughal style. Then we went to the old part of Delhi to the Jami Masjid, built by Shah Jehan and the main mosque of Delhi. It faces the Red Fort (also built by Shah Jehan). Just behind the Jami Masjid the food vendors sell all kinds of things, like kebabs and pani puri and they're famous for selling biryani on a Friday after prayers. Good solid street cooking.
Last stop of the day was just south of Delhi to see the Qutab Minar complex. You can see the five-story minaret for miles around – it's over 70 metres tall and it was built in the 12th century. It was built by Maharajah Jai Singh II in 1728 and was painted a sort of pink when the Prince of Wales visited in 1860 (just like the Queen, everywhere he went smelled of fresh paint... he probably thought thats what the world smelt like.).
We got to Jaipur the next day, the famous Pink City of India.
Its incredible. Not only are the buildings pink, like the Hawa Mahal (Palace of the Winds – it's on the cover of the Lonely Planet guide to India) and the City Palace (busy Maharajah's don't have time to commute from the suburbs every day) , but the women and men wear pink too... and so do the elephants and the camels. Everywhere you look you see pink.
We started at the City Palace and decided to take a picture while we were still fresh. It's a maze of arcades and courtyards and really beautiful doorways like the Peacock Gate. Check out the pictures for the detail on it. It's the kind of astonishing craftsmanship that we used to be able to pull off but seem (the world over) to have pretty much forgotten how to do now.
Jai Singh also built the Jantar Mantar, which is an astronomical observatory – the buildings look like a lot of giant sundials and staircases and it makes you feel very small. Like a Lilliputian. Or like you've been hit by a shrink ray. After being suitably amazed and lost, we managed to see the back view of the Palace of the Winds on our way to the Amber Fort.
Getting lost abroad can also be fun.
The Amber Fort is just outside Jaipur and it's built on a range of hills. It's a steep climb up, but not if you book an elephant for the trip. Consider us booked - as tourists, there was no way we were going without an elephant.
The elephants aren't that fast, but I thought the way they rock from side to side was very soothing (although some some of the other visitors were complaining of seasickness). There was plenty to see and there was even the chance for some drive-by shopping, although the rush hour can cause some traffic snarl-ups.
It may be called a fort, but it looked more like a palace to me... After you get off your elephant (no small feat), you walk up this double-flight of stairs, and then you come out into a courtyard in front of the Ganesha Gate which is all made from inlaid, dyed plaster. It's too good a photo opportunity to resist and a great place to pause and find your feet again.
There's a lot to see and you could really just stop and stare at so many insanely beautiful things... like the elephant-headed columns and the mirrored ceilings and walls. And that's before you get on to the rooftop courtyard with the chatris where you can look out on to the hills all around you, with the walls of the fort along the ridge. You feel like you’re floating on the roof of the world and it’s all kind of Lost Horizons....
The monkeys by the way are fantastic. And excellent climbers. No elephant riding for them... They're also not pink. Well.. not yet. Sure it's only a matter of time before someone spots that and sorts them out though.
Do I just type stuff in and hit 'publish'?
Hi. So this is my first attempt at blogging. I guess it's probably best manners to start with an introduction then go on from there. Can't wait to tell the kids I’m doing this. They'll be sp embarrassed. They were the same when I discovered ringtones ... I'm Emdad. I live in and work in London where I have two restaurants ... Babur, in Honor Oak Park and Planet Spice in South Croydon.
I've decided to keep a blog. There's a few reasons for this ....
One of the joys and problems of running restaurants is that all your time gets sucked into the black hole called ‘work’ – when you run a restaurant you have so many people to answer to, even though you’re the owner, and everybody has to be kept happy. So its good to be able to look back over your year and see that there was real life there, remember some of the things that made me smile. Somehow videotaping my day didn't really seem a viable option. Blogging, however, seemed like an excellent idea.
Another reason is because I absolutely love food. It's why I started in the restaurant business. Since I'm spending more time reading online and I'm always getting asked about things by customers (I’m really lucky that my customers are so interested in what we do, so I’m not really complaining, just kvetching) and friends, I thought it might be a way of giving something back... in return for all the entertainment and ideas I've enjoyed from other people's blogs, writings and ideas.
The third is for the challenge. I'm not known as a technology expert (see ringtones, above, or ask my kids) so bear with me... but taking on new skills is supposed to be fun and rewarding. I'm sure I'll make more than a few crashing mistakes but hopefully by the end of this, I'll get my badge (or whatever they give out to seasoned bloggers) and be able to wax lyrical at parties and gatherings.
Well, thats the first entry done. Time to turn in.
So, do I just hit publish and hope for the best? Thanks for reading.
I've decided to keep a blog. There's a few reasons for this ....
One of the joys and problems of running restaurants is that all your time gets sucked into the black hole called ‘work’ – when you run a restaurant you have so many people to answer to, even though you’re the owner, and everybody has to be kept happy. So its good to be able to look back over your year and see that there was real life there, remember some of the things that made me smile. Somehow videotaping my day didn't really seem a viable option. Blogging, however, seemed like an excellent idea.
Another reason is because I absolutely love food. It's why I started in the restaurant business. Since I'm spending more time reading online and I'm always getting asked about things by customers (I’m really lucky that my customers are so interested in what we do, so I’m not really complaining, just kvetching) and friends, I thought it might be a way of giving something back... in return for all the entertainment and ideas I've enjoyed from other people's blogs, writings and ideas.
The third is for the challenge. I'm not known as a technology expert (see ringtones, above, or ask my kids) so bear with me... but taking on new skills is supposed to be fun and rewarding. I'm sure I'll make more than a few crashing mistakes but hopefully by the end of this, I'll get my badge (or whatever they give out to seasoned bloggers) and be able to wax lyrical at parties and gatherings.
Well, thats the first entry done. Time to turn in.
So, do I just hit publish and hope for the best? Thanks for reading.
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