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.
Monday, 21 May 2007
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.
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