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.
Sunday, 29 April 2007
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.
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