What is a Bradford curry?

It starts with a throwaway response to Niamh (Eat Like A Girl) who asked her Twitter followers about their favourite curry - Indian, Malay, Thai and so forth. Like a shot I was there - "Bradford curry, natch". At which point it got a little more difficult because Niamh asked the tricky question about whether there is something uniquely Bradford about a Bradford curry. Hence this little blog post.

Like everywhere else with decent curry in England, Bradford's curry comes originally from the cafes and restaurants that set up to serve the Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian diaspora working in mills and factories, driving buses and cleaning toilets. Bradford's oldest curry houses - Karachi, Kashmir, Sweet Centre - have been around for over 60 years serving much the same food now as they did back then. The Bradford curry was probably born in these places - not just the odd habit of serving a plate of chips with the rogan josh or saag ghost but changes in ingredients and the currying of almost everything (although this results in the keema and chips with cheese that they serve at the fab MyLahore) but a slightly different type of curry from that you'll get elsewhere.

Most of Britain's curry is cooked by Bangladeshi chefs in restaurants owned by Bengali immigrants and their descendants. Bradford isn't alone in being different here (although we've some decent Bengali-owned restaurants like Moghul's in Keighley) but it's important to note that Bradford's 'Asian' population is overwhelmingly from a small part of Azad Kahsmir near to the city of Mirpur. The Bradford curry is a wedding of the tastes of these immigrants with the ingredients they could get in a Yorkshire mill city.

I had a beer with a leading Bradford chef (well I had a beer, he didn't), Omar Khan founder of OK's (or Omar Khan's restaurant) on Little Horton Lane opposite the ice rink. Omar was Wold Champion Curry Chef in 1995 with his take on that quintessentially British curry dish, chicken tikka masala. Omar was born in Pakistan but came to Bradford as a boy - he's a Bradfordian first and learned to cook here in the city. I asked him what made a Bradford curry different.

"The curries are all different. Those from Mirpur, Azad Kashmir are simple with only a couple of main ingredients. The Pathans have sweet, creamy curries. And further south the curries are hotter. The colder the climate the colder the curry!"

"But what about Bradford, " I ask, "What makes a Bradford curry?"

"Take my chicken tikka masala. Everywhere else puts cream in it..."

"Yoghurt?" I ask

"Sometimes that, yes. But I don't, that wouldn't be Kashmiri style. Keep it simple. About this much onion." Omar holds his thumb and forefinger about two or three inches apart - I guess a medium onion! He continues:

"Tomatoes. Two or three. Ripe. Garlic clove. Chili powder." (he doesn't say how much chili) "Turmeric."

I ask about spices.

"Put a whole clove or two in for more oomph. Cinnamon stick. Two or three peppercorns. You can grind these up if you want, but better whole."

"Jeera you need jeera. Just crushed."

I interrupt to enthuse. Jeera - cumin - is my favourite spice.

"Crushed in a pestle."

I'm not sure any of this qualifies as the recipe I promised Niamh. When Omar and I cooked this live on a stage at the World Markets Festival (really we did), we used fresh chicken rather than prepared with tikka sauce and the whole thing took about 20-30 minutes. We fed it to Gerry Sutcliffe, the then Labour MP for Bradford South and he's still living!

I guess the thing about the Bradford curry is simplicity. There aren't pages of ingredients just meat and vegetables cooked in spices and served with bread or rice. The classic Bradford curry is a child of Kashmiri home cooking - perhaps more meat and less vegetables than in Kashmir but still that sort of cooking. For me saag ghost - lamb and spinach - is the classic Bradford dish. And, like Omar's CTM, it's simple - no cream, no faffing about, just part-cooked lamb finished off with fresh ingredients and spices in a pan on the stove.

This might just be my take (helped by Omar). I guess I could talk to the other restaurateurs I know for some balance but I suspect defining the Bradford curry will always be a little elusive. It's partly the culture it grew up in - immigrants needing to eat after a shift, lads on a night out wanting to eat, young couples wanting a different but still cheap meal - and partly our memories of cheap formica tables, plastic chairs and no cutlery.

I'm sure other Bradford people will have their own views and experiences - favourites even and do share them - but in the end it's perhaps the shared experience of eating great, cheap food in unpretentious surroundings that defines the Bradford curry experience for most of us.


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Uberising home cooking...

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I guess this works in a place where you've a lot of women at home with a kitchen:

Million Kitchen is an aggregator and delivery service by Delhi-based non profit Swechha that allows women to prepare and sell home cooked food to customers within a 5-7 km radius. The app-based service gives young working people the access to fresh and simple homestyle meals as well as empowers women to earn extra money by using their cooking skills. “Every dormant kitchen is a resource lying underutilized,” says Vimlendu Jha, Founder and CEO of Million Kitchen.

I'm sure there'll be the usual guffle about exploitation and workers rights but, hey, this is excellent!

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"What they feed you in Heaven"

The gods have got their communications wrong with all this talk of nectar and ambrosia. I mean how did sweet syrup and rice pudding get to be the acme of grub? Those gods are kidding us - the truth about the food of the gods, the nosh they give you in heaven, is that it involves two vital ingredients - bacon and mushrooms. And today, in an exclusive, The View from Cullingworth reveals what we'll feast on as we lounge on that cloud:

Mushrooms wrapped in Bacon with Rosemary

This truly is "What they feed you in Heaven" - and earth-dwellers, I shall exclusively reveal the recipe (that I've lifted from Shaina Olmanson via The Mushroom Channel).

You'll need:

12 button mushrooms
A handful of rosemary sprigs
4 fl oz apple cider vinegar (or white wine vinegar or sherry)
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 strips of thin bacon, sliced in half

You start by making a marinade by crushing some of the rosemary in  pestle and then mixing it with the vinegar and salt before whisking in the oil. Put the mushrooms in this marinade for at least 20 minutes so the flavours of vinegar and rosemary soak in a little.

Cut the bacon into strips long enough to wrap round a single mushroom (I found this to be about 3 inches in English money). And then you just wrap the bacon round each mushroom and a sprig of rosemary then secure it all in place with a cocktail stick. Place the wondrous things onto a baking tray, drizzle a little of the marinade over the top and pop in the oven at 200 degrees for about 15 minutes to 18 minutes.

Remove from the oven, place onto a silver platter, put your golden harp to one side, lean back on your cloud and enjoy "What they feed you in Heaven".

Perhaps with a glass of fizz?

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A hearty meal

We took a trip to Shan's who call themselves the premier multicultural halal supermarket. They're in Keighley - another premier multicultural halal place - and are well worth a visit. The shop is tidy, stacks of spices, rices and flours line the shelves and it's great to wander through the fruit and veg section going "what on earth is that?" or "I wonder how you cook that?". I love the yard long beans and the strange knobbly roots but have yet to pluck up the excuse to buy some and see how they taste. Maybe next time.

At the back of the shop is a long butcher's counter - chicken, lamb, mutton. Both off and on the bone, butchered Asian style. And plenty of offal from tripe (best avoided I think) through to sweetbreads. Amongst this was a pile of lamb's hearts something I hadn't eaten since my childhood. We bought them and took them home for a hearty meal!

I stuffed the hearts with shallots, chestnut mushrooms and puy lentils and since I had way more stuffing than needed I poured the rest over the top of the hearts before covering and baking slowly for (if I recall right) about two and a half hours at 150 degrees. For the last half hour I took the foil off and added some red peppers - more for colour than for additional flavour.

Very nice it was too (as you can see)!

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Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run...

Baked Pasta with Rabbit

Run rabbit – run rabbit – Run! Run! Run!

Don't give the farmer his fun! Fun! Fun!

He'll get by

Without his rabbit pie

So run rabbit – run rabbit – Run! Run! Run

 

The conversation goes a little like this....

“Why don’t people eat more rabbit? It’s not like there’s a shortage of bunnies?”

“Three reasons – eww, how could you, bunnies are cute; never tried rabbit, so will stick to nice safe steak; and ‘oh, it’s so cruel to shoot and eat wild animals.”

(There’s a fourth reason if you’re Jewish – rabbit isn’t kosher).

Now I like rabbit – it’s lean, full of flavour and carries a sauce very well. Plus it’s usually pretty cheap – posh rabbits from Bolton Abbey estate are £4.50 in Cullingworth’s butcher and I’d lay a bet that you can get them cheaper than that in Bradford’s John Street Market.

Plus, of course, if you can shoot and have a landowner’s permission, you can go and get your own!

So there you are, dead bunny in hand (skinned and cleaned by a helpful butcher in our case) – what to make? Pies and stews are the classics but, for a change, try doing it Italian-style.

Lorenza De’Medici published a book on pasta and accompanying sauces including several recipes for rabbit and I’ve stolen the approach from her (although the actual recipe is not the same).

Baked Pasta with Rabbit (to feed six - or four greedy folk)

One rabbit (cut into sections)

Two medium onions roughly chopped

Three or four good sized carrots thickly sliced

Two good sized sprigs of sage

Large glass of red wine

Pennoni rigati (about 300g)

Pint of white sauce

Couple of fresh tomatoes

Salt

Black pepper

Olive oil

Heat the oil and brown the rabbit pieces and soften the onions and carrots then transfer to a roasting tray. Roughly chop the sage over the rabbit and vegetables and pour the red wine over the top. Cover tightly with foil and slow roast for about 3 hours at 100° (we want the rabbit to fall off the bones easily without being too dry – it’s worth checking after a couple of hours).

Strip the rabbit meat from the skeleton – you want it to be quite finely shredded so pull apart the meat as you take it off the bones. Mix the meat back into the vegetables and set aside.

Cook the pasta for half its recommended time (typically about 5 minutes in salted boiling water), drain and mix thoroughly with the meat and vegetables. Turn this mixture into an over proof dish.

Make the white sauce and pour it over the top of the rabbit and pasta mixture. Decorate with slices of tomato and bake for 35-40 minutes at 200° (180° in a fan oven). You’ll know it’s done when the top has begun to brown a little and is bubbling.

Lovely!

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Friday Fungus: 2011 Vintage!

This year's vintage looks especially fine thanks to Kathryn who did the labels and hats (or whatever we're supposed to call those cloth covers over the lids).

Mushroom ketchup - the original ketchup - is lovely stuff, more subtle that its tomato-ey offspring. It's also really easy to make - and what great Xmas gifts for mushroom loving friends and family!

The recipe is here.

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Remembering asparagus!

Since the asparagus season is over (for those who don't know, it runs from the Grand National to the Derby) I thought I would write about asparagus - sparrow's grass. Despite it making your wee smell funny, it is one of the most flavoursome vegetables and versatile - as a starter, accompanying a main course or, combined with other stuff, a great main course in its own right.

First the boring bit before I describe the recipe that's pictured above:

Asparagus is a herbaceous, perennial plant growing to 100–150 centimetres (39–59 in) tall, with stout stems with much-branched feathery foliage. The "leaves" are in fact needle-like cladodes (modified stems) in the axils of scale leaves; they are 6–32 millimetres (0.24–1.3 in) long and 1 millimetre (0.039 in) broad, and clustered 4–15 together. The root system is adventitious and the root type is fasciculated. The flowers are bell-shaped, greenish-white to yellowish, 4.5–6.5 millimetres (0.18–0.26 in) long, with six tepals partially fused together at the base; they are produced singly or in clusters of 2–3 in the junctions of the branchlets. It is usually dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants, but sometimes hermaphrodite flowers are found. The fruit is a small red berry 6–10 mm diameter, which is poisonous to humans.

Got all that? The plant also has supposed medicinal qualities although I'm pretty (by which I mean 100%) sure that it doesn’t cure cancer.

So, that recipe – roast asparagus salad with poached egg – which comes from Steve Parle (or rather the roast asparagus bit does):

1 large bunch of asparagus
8 sweet cherry tomatoes
2 tbsp of small firm black olives, stones removed
1 scant tsp of capers
6 sprigs of thyme
1 clove of garlic, cut into 4
3½oz/100g lamb’s lettuce, washed and dried
1 scant tsp white wine, cider or sherry vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
2oz/50g aged pecorino or other hard, picante cheese

Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Snap the tough stems from the asparagus and place in a roasting tray with the tomatoes, olives, capers, thyme and garlic. Glug over a little olive oil and roast for five to 10 minutes until the asparagus is soft and the tomatoes have burst.

Remove the tray from the oven and add the vinegar and a little more olive oil. Break the tomatoes up a little into the oil and vinegar to make a sort of dressing.

Lay the lettuce on a serving plate and place the asparagus on top.

Pour over the juices from the roasting tin then shave over some cheese.

My version has two variations – the addition of a poached egg perched atop the roasted sparrow’s grass and a particular cheese:

Pecorino Tartufo is an old style of Umbrian pressed sheep milk cheese. The cheese's buttery nutty flavour is enhanced with the addition of aromatic black truffles giving it a unique signature.

Well there had to be some mushrooms involved somewhere!

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Harvest time is nearly upon us!

The gooseberries are looking fat and juicy - almost ready for picking. Bit I must be patient - must wait until the right moment, the time when a little pinkness creeps onto the berries - then we will gather them up.

And make pies, crumbles, jams...maybe ice cream from them. We'll hand out boxes of them to family, friends and neighbours. But come June next year, I'm pretty sure the freezer will reveal still more:

Isn't nature's bounty just great!

Garlic!

Don't yet know what I'll be doing with this little gift - perhaps garlic chilli chicken or a garlic and lemon soup. Whatever, it's lovely to see fresh garlic like this - better still when it's a gift!

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The perfect condiment?

I was quite tickled by the things for which Encona West Indian Original Hot Pepper Sauce is "ideal". Quite the perfect condiment*

Ideal as a cooking ingredient, condiment or spicy seasoning to give a delicious flavour to all meat, chicken, fish or vegetables. Great added into soups, stews and stirred into dips for a fiery kick.

Wonderful!

*The perfect condiment is, of course, mushroom ketchup

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Friday Fungus: Underground Restaurant and truffled mac & cheese!

I have neglected to speak of many things – and one of them is Ms Marmite Lover (other than a little rant about the Underground Restaurant). So it was a delight to have an excuse for a Marmite Lover themed Friday Fungus.

As with many of these things it started with a tweet – a comment to Mister Truffle from Ms Marmite Lover that she planned a macaroni cheese with truffles. Wow I thought, that’s a brilliant idea – as good as my wife’s approach of adding cayenne pepper. In response Ms Marmite Lover urged me to come and try out said delight at her latest event:

JAR FOOD: PICKLES, POTIONS AND PRESERVES

LONDON: The Underground Restaurant - Kilburn

FRI 4TH MAR, 2011 7.30

A meal in which I explore the properties of food cooked in sealed jars:
pickles
bouillon
bean stew
sauerkraut
preserved fruits
rice pudding
More details closer to the time.

Arrive on time
BYO or order from tengreenbottles.com who will deliver here directly
Dress: Up!
Service: spring like

Sadly for reasons of distance and engagements I can’t go to this – sounds a fine do and as of now there are still a few places left.

But truffles in a macaroni cheese – that’s a thing I shall be trying! There are any number of recipes with truffle oil – like one from The Taste of Oregon (although there’s not much of Oregon in a Mac & Cheese) – but I wanted one that used the real thing, grated black truffles and I found it here.

I shall enjoy – hope you do too!

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Friday Fungus: Hungarian Mushroom Soup (with some soda bread)

This week The Mushroom Channel - that must read/watch/listen for the serious fungi fan - featured a Hungarian mushroom soup from an American food blog, 'For the Love of Cooking'. We decided - or rather Kathryn, who is a better soup cook than me, decided - that with a tweak or two this would make a great lunch dish. Maybe with some soda bread (we use Nigel Slater's pretty foolproof recipe) - which comes out like this:

All very good but you need to know about the tweaking to the soup recipe! Since we didn't have a whole pound of mushrooms (let alone 8oz of white and 8oz of brown mushrooms) we had to make use of the dried stock - a handful of dried wild mushrooms and a handful of dried porcini did the trick. And, even better, soaking these in hot water provided a great basis for the stock - topped up with some good chicken stock this made for a really strong mushroom flavour.

Further, since we didn't have any soured cream (funny what one doesn't keep in store), we needed an alternative - provided by the remainder of the buttermilk used to make the soda bread.

The result was a fantastic soup - joined with the warm soda bread for a great lunch!

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Friday Fungus: Mushroom Barley

I’ve made risotto for years – it’s easy and makes a great supper dish – and have often wondered about how it might work with other grains. So I was delighted to come across this recipe for “mushroom barley” on the Weelicious site – essentially it’s a risotto, or should that be a ‘barlotto’?

I found the recipe a little faffy – too much taking stuff in and out of pots for my liking – but there’s no doubt that the resulting dish tasted fantastic! The rich mushroom and chicken stock soaked into the barley and produced a delightful, deep flavour. It takes longer than risotto – 45 minutes – for the pearl barley to absorb the stock and the grains remain al dente.

Next time, I plan to use a more traditional risotto approach – sealing the grains in hot oil and adding the stock one ladleful at a time. And rather than adding a glass of white wine, I’m thinking about putting in a small glass of Marsala – think that would really set well with the rich stock and mushroom flavours.

An excellent dish nevertheless – ideal for a different winter supper.

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