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.