Thu, 25 Apr, 2013
One box of ready made pani puri shells. One jar of date and tamarind chutney. A box of pani spice mix. Boiled chickpeas and diced potatoes. Finely diced onion. Chopped coriander.
I love putting together this classic Indian snack: punch a hole in the hollow shell (the puri), fill with stuff, dip in the spicy water (the pani) and gobble whole. It’s a good and quick TV dinner!
Tue, 24 Jul, 2012
It must be pretty obvious now that the best stuff to eat in Leicester is South Asian food. There was a lot of immigration to the city in the last century and the majority of the immigrants were of South Asian origin and thus, there are now a lot of Asian restaurants from which to pick. Many of these are situated along Belgrave Road. My brother took us to one much further down Belgrave Road, where it changes to Melton Road. Here was a stand-alone building housing Feast India, a very popular buffet restaurant.
I had no idea what to expect of Feast India but it wasn’t this! The place was big with lots of different counters (each given a cheesy name) and it was absolutely packed with diners made up of families and friends and work groups. Behind each of the counters was a man (or a small army of men) preparing fresh food. There was such variety but you still may not see what I got to try that night – my brother told me that a lot of the curries are under rotation.
Let’s have a look around at the food on offer! A tuk tuk greets you at the entrance. Apart from looking the part, it served double duty as a salad counter.
In the middle was a big open kitchen with counters all around it – ‘Masala 360°‘, they called it. Here was a large selection of veggie and meat curries, freshly made flatbreads, rice and biryanis and fried starters. At one corner one could find all Indian-Chinese dishes – chicken and sweetcorn soup, chilli paneer, salt and pepper squid and more.
The Southern Indian foods and pizza stands are next to each other. The latter (‘Pizza Hatti‘) was offered slices of freshly made pizza with Indian toppings; while this was popular with children, I avoided it. I stuck to the ‘Balu’s Southern Bhavan‘ side of things with the dosa man making fresh dosas to order. From what I gathered, plain dosas, masala dosas and cheese dosas were definitely available. You could also order an uttapam or help yourself to idlis.
A variety of street snacks could be found at the ‘Bombay Chaat Waat‘. People were crowding around the man who prepared the pani puri, dipping stuffed puri bites in spiced water before depositing them onto your plate; they were all popping them right there and then.
At the ‘Great Kebab Factory‘, fresh kebabs and chicken and paneer tikkas were being grilled right under our noses.
There was quite a selection of desserts too. These little cups caught my eye, all filled with jellies and yogurts and kheers. In addition, there was a selection of eggless cakes, some traditional Indian sweets and a whole ice cream display freezer full of kulfis and sorbets.
I attempted to sample as much as possible that night. To see what everything on my plates was, please do click through on the photos to see where I’ve labelled everything on Flickr.
I didn’t manage to try everything but I was utterly stuffed! The masala dosa was excellent, all thin and crispy, as were the sambhar and chutneys. The pani puri were also very good and I joined the group around the chaat man to munch on freshly prepared ones; leave them too long and they’ll be soggy. Biryanis and freshly made naans were fantastic. The vegetables and vegetable curries were all excellent and so too were most of the meat ones (the lamb curries could have been cooked to further tenderness though). The fish dishes, in particular, were brilliant – there was an excellent southern Indian fish curry and brilliant lime fish pakoras.
Skip the aloo tikki, which was hard to the point of inedible; I also found the kebabs a bit dry but perhaps I chose pieces that were too small as they were all going fast.
Desserts were fine though from my sampling of ice cream, go with the kulfi rather than the sorbet. The Indian sweets were all lovely – gulab jamun and a thick yogurt dessert were excellent.
The cost for dinner is currently £14.95 per person (£11.50 for Sunday lunch and less also for children). I’m definitely a fan! With the variety and quality on offer, it’s closer to the high-end buffets you find in Asia rather than here in the UK and gosh darn it, it’s fun. It’s a great place for large groups too but do book in advance.
Feast India
411 Melton Road
Leicester LE4 7PA
Thu, 19 Jul, 2012
I was up in Leicester last week to see my brother graduate and as he’s now moving down to London, I knew that this would be my last visit up to Leicester for a while. My brother had arranged to take us to all his favourite spots before he left and when I was given a choice of popular Indian restaurant off Belgrave Road (he recommends Blue Peter) or a cheap, little, out-of-the-way place where mainly Indian factory workers have their lunch. Well obviously I’d choose the latter and it turned out to be Rahat.
Rahat is more like a takeaway shop with space for eating – don’t expect luxury here. The tables and chairs are simple, there are jugs of tap water available and there’s a Bollywood film blasting away behind the counter. My brother gave me the lowdown – the menu is just a guide of sorts and not everything will be available. We interrogated the smiling man behind the counter on what they had in their kitchen. Chicken karahi, lamb karahi, chicken with spinach, lamb with spinach.
“Do you have dry meat?”, I asked. He replied, “Yes!” “Do you have keema?”, asked my brother. He replied, “No!” Another man came from the back and muttered a few things to him. He suddenly brightened and went, “We also have fish masala and king prawns!”
We made our order and in addition to naans, we asked for some pilao rice. The kind man’s face dropped – there was no pilao rice that day. We shrugged and said ok but he called us back soon after, the smile having returned to his face. “We can give you the rice from the akhni pilao. Normally this has lamb on top but we’ll just give you the rice!”. Great!
We retired to the table by the window where my father had installed himself and waited to eat. It didn’t take long before the man came along with lots of dishes to pepper our table.
A complimentary salad plate was first placed before us and I started tasting the yogurt based dressing on the side (what is that sauce called?). Despite its innocent looks and to my surprise, it was very very hot and spicy!
Dry Meat was less dry than I was expecting but still very moreish with lots of tender lamb.
The Fish Masala was my favourite of the curries and I certainly ate more than my fair share of this. The light but highly spiced curry went well with the delicate white fish fillets.
Karahi Chicken was pretty fiery and delicious but was a little let down by the use of chunks of chicken breast. It would have been ace with dark meat. I really enjoyed the different spice combinations used in the curries – it was clear that each had been cooked from scratch and they all didn’t start from the same curry base.
The rice from the Akhni Pilao (we had two plates!) was still studded with lots of lamb and was richly flavoured and spiced. It was probably better eaten by itself than with the rest of the curries.
Naans were fresh and hot and soft and crispy and perfect for mopping up the curries.
But that wasn’t all! The smiling man came along to our table with a gift – a “Special Salad” that he’d sprinkled with a spice mix – I think it must’ve been a chaat masala or something similar.
He then returned with another gift from the kitchen – a dish of the King Prawn Masala he’d mentioned before. The prawns were fantastic and in another highly spiced but slightly gelatinous sauce.
It was a ridiculous amount of food and of course we didn’t finish it all. We were stuffed and it had all been excellent. I started guessing how much the total would be; my brother started with £18, I went with £22 and my father went in between with £20.
(Yes, that’s an Instagram photo – you can find me there as sulineats).
So, the grand total (with two cans of soda)? A mind blowing £16. It turned out that the kind man behind the counter had judged portion sizes for us and had given us small portions rather than the medium (~£4-5) and large (~£7-8) portion sizes listed on the menu. How kind – they’re all truly friendly there! Anything more would have been too much for the three of us.
My brother tells me the naan wraps there are great for a quick lunch or they’ll serve you rice or naan and a curry for a song. It’s quite the little gem.
Rahat
1 Suffolk Street/437 St Saviours Road (it’s on the corner)
Leicester LE5 4JA/4HH
Thu, 5 Jul, 2012
About a month ago, I met Slow Food Kitchen, sloLondon and Table for One in Tooting to explore the neighbourhood. Little did I know that what was going to be a stroll and then lunch in a Sri Lankan restaurant was going to turn into a full blown food crawl. Stomachs, on your marks, get set…. go.
With empty stomachs at 1pm and late arrivals, we early birds stared longingly at the Dosa n Chutny across from Tooting Broadway tube station. I’d heard very good things about the place from at least 3 other people and a decision was made to have “breakfast” there when everyone arrived. It would be light, really. First to arrive were Idly (2 pieces for £1.60), fluffy steamed rice and lentil pillows served with a couple of wonderfully spicy chutnys and a mild soothing sambar.
Two dosas were ordered too – we’d heard that this place sold the best dosas in London. I have no idea if that’s true but they were indeed excellent, all thin and crispy. A Mutton Masala Dosa (£4.50) was filled with a mixture of lamb, potato and onion.
The Mysore Masala Dosa (£3.50) was filled with a lurid mixture of spicy potatoes and onions. Again, both dosas came with the chutnys and sambars – one dosa would make a perfect lunch, making each quite a bargain.
Dosa n Chutny
68 Tooting High St
London SW17 0RN
After “breakfast”, we strolled up and down Tooting High Street and entered Tooting Market and the Broadway Market. There we found a Mauritian food stall filled with lots of things we couldn’t identify. Luckily for us, the men behind the counter were extremely friendly and helped identify most things.
Roti chaud was a lentil wrap filled with curried beans, a fresh tomato sauce and a fresh chilli sauce. The wrap has a characteristically dusty texture and I thought it was alright. I might have to go back to try it again.
I was less taken with the plateful of fritters we also bought. The bread fritters were the most amusing – slices of white bread dipped in pakora batter and then fried. Yeah, not my thing but I hear they’re quite popular in Mauritius.
There was also a stop at Pepi’s Guyanese Food, another stall in the markets, where we tried an order of pholourie, quite moreish little lentil fritters, served with a fresh chilli sauce. They had lots of other great looking things in their display cabinet.
Back on the high street and further down at a street stand, we got excited over the last Alphonso mangoes of the season and also over fruit I’d not seen before. Jamuns are a dark purple fruit with a single pit and are really only edible when fully ripe and a dark purple inside. But even when ripe, they’re still quite astringent and I didn’t quite warm to them.
There was also a short stop at Pooja Sweets for sweet and savoury snacks but my mind was already at our final destination – Jaffna House – for Sri Lankan cuisine. This is what we originally came here for! As it was late in the day, we managed to beat the lunch crowds but that there were still diners impressed me – people were dropping by all through the afternoon.
We started by splitting a couple of their short eats, their name for the snacks that are very popular in their country. The Mutton Roll (£1.10) was spiced meat and potato wrapped in a pancake, coated with bread crumbs and deep fried. The Cutlet (£1.10) was a mad of potatoes, fish, spices, onions and chillies rolled in bread crumbs and deep fried. They were both mildly spiced and I think would be popular with non-Sri-Lankans too (on the contrary, I once bought some short eats at a place in Wembley and while they were delicious, they almost blew my head off).
I was very keen to try at least one of their devilled dishes. Their Devilled Mutton (£4.50) was dry cooked, very tender mutton fried with lots of onions, green chillies and spices. Our forks were flying – I need to learn how to make this at home!
String Hoppers were ordered with Sothy (5 pieces for £2.50). These steamed red rice flour strings were not unlike noodles and the sothy was a coconut milk gravy. I spooned the sothy all over my string hopper and then sprinkled on the lovely spicy coconut sambol. They were delicious.
Fried String Hoppers with Mixed Vegetables (£4.00) could have been a Chinese-Sri Lankan fusion dish. Stir fried noodles!
Chicken Kotthu (£4.50) was chopped up roti fried together with with chicken curry, egg, onions and green chillies. It was fantastic, so full of flavour and incredibly easy to just spoon into one’s mouth continuously.
I have no idea how the others found space for dessert but I tried a spoonful of their Watal Appam (£1.75). It was a palm sugar custard that wasn’t too sweet and it certainly tasted much better than it looked!
Even with countless soft drinks ordered between us, our bill at Jaffna House was only £27 in total. And the short eats are even cheaper when you takeaway – I took home 3 of the cutlets for only a pound.
Jaffna House
90 Tooting High St
London SW17 0RN
How in the world did we manage a whole afternoon of eating?! We only parted at 6pm and I certainly didn’t eat much else that day. Thank you, Tooting.
Fri, 29 Jun, 2012
Goan food! Yet another cuisine that I was keen to get my teeth into – this small west Indian state is known for its cuisine that’s heavily influenced by the Portuguese and a large number of Goan Catholics means that pork features heavily. Pork? Oh yes. I do love pork curry. I joined Mr Noodles, Rahul (our Goan friend!), Kay, and Wen and family one night to try the Goan food on offer at Ma Goa in Putney. While we were there first there at 7pm, the place soon became packed – bookings are essential.
While we waited for everyone to arrive, a selection of most of the starters on the menu was ordered. The Balchao & Sanna (£5.55) were shrimps in a tomato based pickling sauce (the balchao) and a Goan steamed bread (the sanna). These were made with tiny shrimps as is usual but it seemed a bit odd to be eating this as a starter and sure enough, our Goan friend told us that this is normally a side dish. Still, it wasn’t bad but more sanna would have been nice to sop it all up.
Sorpotel (£5.65) was lambs liver, kidney and pork belly cooked in a spicy sauce. It was delicious and probably the only way I’m happy to eat liver and kidney – with lots of spices!
I was very keen to try the Goa Chorizo (£6.50), a spicy pork chorizo served stir fried with potato and onion. It came in a thick curry-like paste (I’m not describing it very well) and was quite moreish. I can never turn down chorizo and certainly not a spicy Goan chorizo.
Not Goan but still tasty was the Dahi Puri (£4.95). They’re big bursting bubbles of fried gram flour filled with potato, coriander, tamarind, yoghurt and green chlli and topped with fried sev, fried gram flour threads.
Is there any way of making photos of curry look good? We ordered a lot of them (among other things) for our mains and I’m presenting them in order from ok to fantastic.
Nariyal Gosht (£9.75) was described as lamb in a dry masala and I had hopes of finding something like a Goan rendang. Instead, it was a thick generic curry with much too much dessicated coconut mixed through which was unpleasant to chew.
Sabzi Amo-tik (£8.25) was going to be our vegtable dish – mixed vegetables in a traditional Goan hot and sour sauce. Again, there was nothing to distinguish this curry dish from any other curry house dish except for the fact that it was all vegetables. A little hot, a little sour, it was alright.
I was also excited to try a Porco Vindaloo (£9.75). I have no idea what constitutes a proper vindaloo but our Goan diner wasn’t convinced by this version. Still, it was fine if a little unexciting.
A Gallina Xhacutti (£8.95) was chicken on-the-bone (though I don’t remember any bones) in a curry flavoured with ground sesame seed, fresh ground coconut and peanuts. It was tasty though still not one that stood out.
Best of the curries was the Goa Prawn Kodi (£11.95), a dish supposedly found in many beach hut restaurants in Goa. The tangy curry went well with the prawns though the prawns were a tad bit overcooked.
Surprisingly, the best two dishes were non-curries. The Seafood Biryani (£15.50) was excellent and filled with salmon, prawns, mussels, squid and crab. It was gently spiced (in a good way) and had lots of delicious fried onions.
My favourite of all the dishes we ordered was the Gallina Cafrael (£11.95), a slowed cook quarter chicken with potatoes and a fresh green masala. It didn’t look like much but the chicken was exceptionally moist (even the breast) and yes, the masala did taste freshly made.
We had a few side dishes too. When I asked what their Daal of the Day (£4.25) was, all the waiter could reply was “Yellow.” Luckily for me, this yellow daal was absolutely gorgeous and so full of flavour thanks to use of a delicious tarka.
Okra was stir-fried with mustard seeds, green peppers and onions (£4.75) and was fine, similar to what you get at northern Indian restaurants.
A selection of Naans also went down well – plain (£2.45), garlic and chilli (£2.75) and sweet with coconut and chopped nuts (£3.25). Likewise, the rices were excellent – here we had a basmati rice with saffron and cashew nuts (£3.85) and a coconut and curry leaf rice that came with the Gallina Cafrael.
We were pretty stuffed but as usual I’m never one to leave without having dessert, especially a dessert that’s particular to Goa. Their Bibique (£5.00) (also known as bebinca) was labelled on their menu as being made by their friend Mr Santos. Whoever Mr Santos is, he did a great job on this layered cake made with flour, sugar, egg yolks, ghee and coconut milk. It was fantastically delicious and fantastically rich. I wish the portion had been a bit bigger!
It was a very good introduction to Goan food and it’s whetted my appetite for more. I do recommend their nimbu pani (spiced lemonade). Thanks for the great evening, everyone!
Ma Goa
242-244 Upper Richmond Road
Putney
London SW15 6TG
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