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.