liuzhou

I may give that a miss! 🤣

Oh dear. I guess you know how to cook chicken. Do you serve and eat it the same way every time? I also know how to cook potatoes. I certainly don't always serve them the same way every time, either.

No, I don't. They are both long established descriptors. Calling them 'brats' would be. Also, 'fussy' or 'picky' do not include the parents. Yes. The poorer classes dont tend to hang around restaurants much.

Thanks, but perhaps I should have been clearer. I know how to prepare and cook it. I was more looking for what to do with it thereafter.

No one said it was better. It was just used as an example. I see no overtones of morality or judgement other than as noted below. I already said, this was only my personal observations and there may well be fussy eaters, but in England I know many - usually regarding vegetables, especially greens. Also. anecdotally in most western countries. Isn't it surprising that I've never met one in 25 years in China? And children are most certainly taken to restaurants. I seriously doubt any fussy eaters are left behind at home to fend for themselves. Ha! Now who is being judgemental? It's my fault for not noticing that child lurking in the corner? If a child were to do so, and I'm pretty observant, the bowl of rice or noodles wouldn't have come from a children's menu! That was my only point there - they don't have children's menus.

Please don't misunderstand me. Despite the stupid, racist saying that the Chinese eat everything on legs except the table, many Chinese people are very conservative about eating foods they have never seen before. But that's as adults. I've never seen children with the same reaction. They still pile into KFC and McDonalds', but also still eat the greens and pig's tongue and goose intestines that their parents eat.

I've happily eaten pork tongue many times in restaurants and friends' homes here, but never cooked it. Today, on a whim, I bought one. Obviously, I can and will ask those friends for suggestions as to how to use it, but I'd also like to read what suggestions people here may have. My friends are all going to give me Chinese ideas. There must be others! Thanks!

11C. Balti + More, not Baltimore Two dishes often said to be British innovations are among the most popular in Indian restaurants in Britain. Let's have a look. Balti, also known as balti gohst (Urdu: بالٹی گوشت‎, Hindi: बाल्टी गोश्त) is often said to have been invented by Bangladeshi chefs in what is now known as the Balti Triangle in Birmingham, England, sometime in the 1970s. Even the city government promotes the city by unequivocally sloganeering that “Birmingham is the original home of the Balti”. Given that balti has been known and eaten in northern India and Pakistan for many years longer, that seems unlikely. It is more likely to have arrived in Britain in the 1970s. Balti Gosht The word ‘balti' , found in several of the Indian subcontinent's languages seems to have originated in the Portuguese balde, meaning a bucket or pail. This was transferred to refer to type of deep cooking pot, resembling the Chinese wok. This was then transferred to a dish cooked in said pot, not an unlikely scenario when you consider that many dishes across the world’s cuisines are so named – casserole, tagine and paella leap to mind. Pat Chapman, founder of The Curry Club in the UK, who writes about Indian restaurant food, sees a link between balti and Baltistan, the Kashmiri state (administered by Pakistan), bordering China. Other writers dismiss this, pointing out the dish balti bears no resemblance to any food traditionally eaten there. Balti as served in Pakistan Whatever the origin of the dish, by the 1990s it had spread from a small area of Birmingham, across Britain and Ireland, then to places such as New Zealand and Australia. I’ve seen it on menus in Indian restaurants in Hong Kong. It is now even sold in British supermarkets in a do-it-yourself version. There is (or was) even a brand of Balti Wine, supposed to marry well with south Asian food, especially balti. It is/was made from Argentinian grapes, but developed in 2004 in Manchester, England by a Pakistani entrepreneur. It should not be confused with Bălți, the Moldovan wine region. Note: I have been unable to determine if this wine is still available. The company’s website is dead and the domain up for sale at ₤1,795 (~ $2,530 USD) So what is a balti, the dish? Basically, it is general type of curry, using customer chosen meats and vegetables, but instead of being slowly stewed like most Indian preparations, balti is quick fried using a stir-fry technique like that of Chinese cooking. It also tends to use vegetable oil as the frying medium rather than the ghee (clarified butter) used in most of the subcontinent. _____________________________________________________________________________________ And so I come to Britain’s National dish (according to Robin Cook (1946 – 2005), the late British government foreign secretary who praised the dish in a 2001 speech on Britain’s multi-ethnicity). Chicken Tikka Masala Chicken Tikka Masala According to the legends, in 1971, someone, said by some to have been a bus driver, somewhere in Britain, ordered the well-established dish, Chicken Tikka which originated in the Mughal Dynasty (c. 1526 to 1857). It is a dish of meat or paneer (a type of Indian soft cheese) marinated in yoghurt and spices then baked in a tandoor, a traditional clay oven (although today they may be made from steel.) The fabled bus driver found the dish too dry for his taste, so asked for it to be dressed in a curry sauce. A chef added some masala sauce and Chicken Tikka Masala was born! He spread the word more and more people requested the dish, so it was added to the menu increasing its popularity and other restaurants began to copy it. By the mid-1980s it was the nation’s favourite curry, if not quite a National Dish. It took another decade to cement that reputation. So much for legends. The first problem is that no one has ever definitively identified that restaurant where the genesis supposedly took place. Various claims have been made across the country from “near London” to Glasgow in Scotland. The modern-day pundits are very divided, with a few backing the bus driver theory to an Indian journalist suggesting a link to a dish from the Punjab region in the north of India bordering Pakistan. The most common, and in my opinion most likely, view is that it was invented by Bangladeshi chefs some time in the 1960s and lay dormant until awakened when discovered in the early 1970s. Many writers have noted its similarity to murgh makhani aka butter chicken, a dish of chicken in a spiced tomato, butter and cream sauce. This dish is known to have been invented in Delhi, India in the 1950s by the chef owner of the Moti Mahal restaurant. It is said the dish was invented accidentally when tandoor-cooked chicken was mixed with tomato gravy, rich in butter and cream. Sound familiar? Bizarrely, one writer also claims that Hannah Glasse’s 1747 recipe for curry which I referenced above is also similar to butter chicken, although how she copied a recipe created 200 years later goes unexplained. There is only a vague resemblance that I can see, in that they both use chicken and Glasse does fry her meat in butter, as did most cooks then. In the later version of her recipe, she also adds cream. She probably had no access to tomatoes, which were only then beginning to be eaten in Britain, despite having been introduced much earlier. The ‘fusion’ origins of the dish gain weight from the name, which itself is a fusion of different languages, tikka being from the Hindi or Punjabi टिका ṭikka, which in itself came from the Turkic word tikkü, meaning "piece" or "chunk", and masala from the Urdu ماسالا masala meaning “spice mix”. Whatever the origins, the dish has become Britain’s favourite curry and one of the nation’s top dishes.It is even said to be the second favourite 'foreign' dish for home cooking, but as the top favourite is Chinese stir-fry which isn't just one dish (actually more of a cooking technique), I'd call chicken tikka masala number one. From Britain, the dish has spread around the world, even being found today in India’s own trendy restaurants. Outrageous cultural appropriation, I say! 😂 Image Credits: 1. Balti Gosht - Image by ayes - licenced under CC BY 2.0 2. Balti Gosht in Pakistan - Image by Miansari66 - Public Domain 3. Chicken Tikka Masala - Image by Michael Hays -licenced under CC BY 2.0

I think I've mentioned this before, and everything I'm about to repeat or say is purely based on my own observations of acquaintances, lovers, friends and enemies alike. Please take as you find it and don’t complain to me that it is unscientific – I know, thanks. Yet, I am sure what I have to say is valid. In my quarter of a century in China and even more in Asia, I have never once come across what we call fussy or picky children when it comes to food. I have questioned knowledgeable friends and parents, but they didn’t even understand my question – the concept was beyond them. Regularly, I eat in restaurants from the small noodle joints to lavish banqueting rooms, and have seen children pick out the vegetables to eat first. I’ve seen recently weaned children happily eat their greens, but be more hesitant about the proteins before getting there. I’ve spent my life working in universities around the world, seeing college students eating in canteens. Only here in China have I seen every student eating healthy fresh vegetables, rather than the burgers or pizzas I always saw in British universities. The typical lunch the students select here consists of two dishes plus rice. One dish is always vegetables – usually green. A dish without some green vegetables is almost unthinkable. I’ve never seen a restaurant in China with a separate children’s menu or children’s section on the main menu. Children eat what everyone else is eating. With famine and hunger still a living memory for many people, children are brought up to respect food and eat (to use a famous Chinese phrase) ‘every grain of rice”. Wasting food is seen as sinful. Beyond that, I am not qualified to venture as to reasons for the difference betwen cultures and I’m not going to guess, but given how often the topic comes up, usually in threads about something completely unrelated, I thought it may benefit from a topic of its own. I look forward to everyone’s thoughts and stories.

Well, I'm in the 'of course they aren't desserts' camp, too. I would never have thought that. They aren't new, either. My mother made tarts identical to these some 60 years ago or more! Didn't need a Robot Coupe, either.

I wouldn't go that far. Gary Rhodes had a great impact and I know many people in the UK who still use his books regularly, including my daughter. She was very upset when he died in November 2019 at such a young age. Madjur Jaffrey also. She got a lot of of people cooking Indian food at home, to the extent that most supermarket now stock the requisite spices and ingredients which weren't previously easy to find nationwide. One noticable absence from the list is the now deeply untrendy Delia Smith who had a much bigger influence that any of those on the list. I can't stand the woman but won't deny that almost everyone I know has their sauce stained copy of her Complete Cookery Course (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). Even I have one somewhere back in England.

11b. A sample of Indian dishes or maybe not. Never order anything labelled ‘curry’ in a British ‘Indian’ restaurant. The term is never used that way in India. The word comes from the Tamil word ‘ கறி - kari’ which means sauce or a relish for rice. Generic curry in poorer quality curry restaurants is made by preparing a huge vat of vaguely spicy master gravy (or even buying it in pre-prepared from a factory) which is poured over whichever meat or vegetables the customer requests. Chicken, beef, lamb, prawns*, etc. All taste the same, and it isn’t a good taste. Good restaurants individually match the sauces to the protein and list the dishes by name. There are many lists of ‘curries’ on the internet, as well as in magazines and newspapers purporting to list curries by mildest to hottest. They all disagree and the reason is very simple – it depends on the chef and restaurant. Where they indicate level of spiciness, the menus disagree, too. Also, the same dish in one restaurant may even look very different from that in another. That said, it is possible to generalise. Here are a very few dishes from the classic Indian restaurant menu. ‘Kormas’ are always mild, creamy and virtually un-spiced. I have heard them referred to as ‘the curry to order if you don’t like curry’. They are authentically Indian, though, having originated as part of Mughal cuisine in the 16th century in north India and what is now Pakistan. A popular choice is ‘dhansak’, a dish of meat or prawns cooked with lentils and vegetables Some places in Britain sweeten it with tinned pineapple. If you find that in your dhansak, run! You have entered a palace of debauchery and sin – and not the fun kind! Dhansak is usually classed as medium hot, which when you think about it doesn’t tell you much. A ‘bhuna’ is a Bengali dish of fried spices (ভাত - bhuna is Bengali for ‘fried’) and meat cooked in its own juices. It originated in the Bangladeshi city of Chittagong. These are usually dry curries and are classed as medium to hot. ‘Dopiaza’ is my favourite. Meaning ‘double onions’, this Hyderabad dish is prepared using onions twice. They appear in the dish’s sauce and also as a garnish. A sour taste is usually added to the dish using tamarind, or in many restaurants, lemon. Again medium to hot. ‘Rogan Josh’ (Urdu: روجن جاش) is a mutton dish from Kashmir in the north of India. It is sometimes erroneously called ‘rogan gosht’. The dish should be a rich red colour, which in Kashmir comes from the local chillies, but in Britain is often achieved using tomatoes and/or red bell peppers. This dish is normally hot. ‘Madras’ dishes have nothing to do with Madras, now known as Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu State in south India. This rich and hot dish was invented in Britain by Bengali chefs. One of the hottest offerings in British Indian restaurants is ‘vindaloo’, which actually originated in Portugal then entered India via Goa, which was a Portuguese colony from 1510 until as recently as 1961. The Portuguese dish, carne de vinha d'alhos, which means ‘meat with wine vinegar and garlic’ was introduced to the area and then adapted by adding local spices. The name, vindaloo is a probably derived from a mishearing or misunderstanding of ‘vinha d'alhos’, which was also confused with ‘आलू - aloo’ the Hindi word for ‘potato’. This probably accounts for the many British restaurants now including potato in the dish. India has one thing to be grateful for though - it was the Portuguese who introduced chillis to the subcontinent. The hottest dish on British menus is ‘phal’ (which also comes in various alternative spellings). This dish was invented by Bengali chefs in the famous Indian city of Birmingham in England! It was done so to satisfy the drunken idiots who wanted to show off their manly credentials by eating the hottest thing imaginable, no doubt to make up for inadequacies elsewhere. It has nothing to do with India, whatsoever. It is basically meat in a tomato sauce laden with ludicrous amounts of dried chillies, or with samples of the planet’s hottest freak cultivars. The restaurants came to regret coming up with the dish, as I will explain later. Astute readers and those who know British Indian food better will realise I’ve missed two of Britain’s most famous ‘curries’, including its most popular. Don’t worry, they are coming. They require more elaborate explanation than this brief summary. * I use ‘prawns’, rather than ‘shrimp’, deliberately. British English differentiates between the two. You will never see what we call shrimp in a British Indian restaurant.

Goose liver fried rice. Mise: Clockwise from top: Baby wild matsutake, Chinese chives, The holy trinity (garlic, ginger and chilli), soy sauce stewed goose liver, fresh summer bamboo shoots, Chinese celery. You don't need me to show you the cooked rice leftover from yesterday, so you?

I'm sorry you had a bad time, but I wasn't recommending the place. As I said I've never been there. I only included it because it's the oldest surviving Indian restaurant and I was writing about the history of such places in Britain.

Cherries.

You couldn't see it was lager? Funnily enough, I am in the process of writing the next instalment which features curry and lager, a 'traditional' pairing in Britain dating all the way back to the 1980s. I've never eaten at Veeraswamy's so can't comment on your experience, but I have London friends who like it a lot.

I started this topic five years ago, when I received an unexpected gift of 1.5 kg and 'complained' that it was too many for just me. Today 5 kg turned up! These ones are from Yantai in northern China, an area known for its cherries.

Just arrived from a client. 5 kg of cherries from Yantai in northern China, famous for its high-quality cherries. The image shows half of them; there is another box. How I'll ever get through them, I'll never know.

I've eaten that one!

I've heard of all the cooks and read most of the books. It may be because, like the Guardian and Jay Rayner, I am British. I too, like his writing. His restaurant reviews are great reading even if you know you will never visit the places in question. His rare bad reviews are hilariously vicious. This one is a favourite, with this a close second. As to the stuff on pedestals, I see roast turkeys, covered in icing / frosting. I don't remember that being a 1960s classic, but it wouldn't surprise me!

Yes. Again, this is just a summary of the Simon Majumdar's much more detailed podcast in the link @Anna Ngave earlier. For convenience, here that is again. It is based on much the same sources that I used.

11. Seeking Ruby Murray It is often assumed that “curry” came to Britain via the British Raj (1858 to 1947) or the earlier East India Company rule (1757-1857). However, the earliest printed English recipe for “Currey” appeared in Hannah Glasse’s highly successful The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, first published in 1747. The word "curry" in English was long established prior to that, though, first being recorded in 1598. Hannah Glasse – Art of Cooking - 1747 The dish may not be what we think of curry today, but with its liberal use of black peppercorns and coriander seed, we can see the beginnings of something more recognisable. Later editions updated the recipe to drop the rabbits and also include turmeric and ginger, as well as lemon and cream. Hannah Glasse – Art of Cooking – 1774 edition However, it was during the Company rule and later the British Raj, that more and more British personnel spent time in India and developed a taste for the local cuisine. On their return to Britain, they naturally wanted to continue eating their new-found favourites, or at least, a near approximation. Also, these people, while in India had their servants cook British dishes but with local spicing and other influences, leading to what is often described as Anglo-Indian cuisine. Instruction manuals for this food were printed and distributed in India, a well known example being Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert’s Culinary Jottings for Madras, Or, A Treatise in Thirty Chapters on Reformed Cookery for Anglo-Indian Exiles from 1878. Catchy title, Arthur! Favourite dishes invented at the time include kedgeree, mulligatawny soup, seafood rissoles and a dish known as pish-pash, a soupy dish of rice with pieces of chopped meat, similar to congee and usually considered children’s food. image - Simon Harriyott; licenced under CC BY 2.0 The first known “Indian” restaurant in Britain was the “Hindoostane Coffee House” in London, which appeared in 1809, but had failed by 1810, due to lack of interest. It did not sell the native food, but Anglo-Indian food, with the dishes reported as being “dressed with curry powder, rice, Cayenne, and the best spices of Arabia”. "Indian" food was also cooked at home from a similar date, as cookbooks of the time seem to attest. Few, if any, of these dishes remain on British menus today, and certainly not in “Indian” restaurants. One preparation that was hugely influential and remains popular to this day is chutney. In the 1840s, thousands of east Indian sailors, known as lascars, were recruited by the East India Company, mainly in Bengal, the area now divided between the Indian state of West Bengal and the independent country of Bangladesh. Several jumped ship after arriving in British ports to escape ill-treatment at the hands of ship owners and disappeared into the cities to try to settle there. They were often met with hostility and racism, but some eventually found a sort of life, even marrying local women, despite opposition from politicians and church leaders. Most were bitterly poor and lived on charity, which earned them the reputation of being lazy and work-shy. The truth is few people would employ them. Veeraswamy's, London - Image by Alex.muller - licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0 The oldest surviving Indian restaurant is Veeraswammy’s, opened on April 21st 1926 (the day Queen Elizabeth II was born), by Edward Palmer, a retired Anglo-Indian soldier and great-grandson of an English general and an Indian princess. Today, it is a Michelin star holding, upmarket venue serving authentic Indian food. A sample of dishes from their menu is here. Address: Mezzanine Floor, Victory House, 99 Regent Street, London W1B 4RS (entrance on Swallow Street) Tel. +44 20 7734 1041. Nearest Underground stations: Piccadilly or Oxford Circus. In 1932, an Indian government survey of 'all Indians outside India' found a population of 7,128 Indians in the United Kingdom, including students, former lascars, and some professionals such as doctors. The resident Indian population of Birmingham was recorded at 100 which grew to around 1,000 by 1945. During WWII, a number of lascars served in the British army and many died. At the end of the war, a number of Indian soldiers, including former lascars, but also others who had also fought with the British forces, were demobbed in Britain and stayed. In 1947 came India’s independence and the Partition which was the separation of what had been India into India and Pakistan, the latter being split into East and West Pakistan. This lead to internal violence and even more Indians and Pakistanis made their way to the UK. Like many immigrants before them a number of these new immigrants took to catering as a means to survive; initially serving up their own food to their fellow immigrants. At that time curry in Britain was still stuck in the Hannah Glasse mode. Ersatz versions occasionally made their way to the British diner. In 1961, the British food company, Batchelor’s launched a type of processed “curry” known as Vesta. I remember these; they were weird. Basically dried, pre-cooked, sweet chicken in a vaguely spicy gravy and rice. Even when reconstituted according to the packet instructions, no one in India would have had a clue what it was supposed to be. (They also did “Chinese” dishes such as Chow Mien which would have left anyone in China baffled.) Batchelor’s is now owned by Premier Foods and appears to have dropped the Vesta chicken curry, although a beef version is still apparently available online. Why anyone would want it is a mystery. It is made with these typically Indian ingredients: rice (57%), dried cooked beef (10%) (cooked beef, salt), maize starch, dried vegetables (8%) (onion, peas, carrot, green pepper, red pepper), dried glucose syrup, sugar, vegetable oils (sunflower palm), spices (ground fenugreek, ground coriander, ground turmeric, ground black pepper, ground cumin, ground celery seed, ground ginger, ground paprika, ground chilli, ground bay leaves), salt, tomato powder, yeast extract (containing barley), acid (citric acid), flavour enhancers (monosodium glutamate, disodium 5'-ribonucleotides). In March 1971, the two geographically separated parts of Pakistan embarked upon a civil war which ended in the victory of East Pakistan in December of the same year and the renaming of East Pakistan to Bangladesh, as an independent state. This war and the earlier atrocities carried out by West Pakistan against the East which prompted the war, also led to a large number of people fleeing to the UK, mainly Bengalis. Once again many of these new settlers opened restaurants, initially aimed at their compatriots. The British people slowly started trying them out. I remember the first time I ate in an “Indian restaurant” in Britain. It was 1972 and my companion and I were the only non-South-Asian customers, as far as I could determine. I forget what we ate but it sure wasn’t Vesta. So, it was around the early 1970s when “Indian” food really began to take off in Britain, mainly in restaurants owned and operated by Bengali immigrants. Today, the industry remains predominantly Bengali irrespective of what dishes appear on their menus. Indian cuisine, like neighbouring China’s is highly regional. Today, “Indian” restaurants are everywhere in Britain. Even small remote villages are likely to have one, even if only for takeaway. Some are excellent, most are acceptable, a few less so – just like any other type of restaurant. Of course, as time has gone by, many of the Bengali restaurateurs have modified their dishes to suit local preferences. They are in business to survive; not as some sort of museum curators. That said, the British public is increasingly looking for novelty and seeking out more and more regional cuisines. In London, the area around Drummond Street in the Euston Station neighbourhood was known for its excellent southern Indian vegetarian food. The street was full of award winning restaurants, mainly run by Indian rather than Bangladeshi owners. Today, its future is in doubt, partly due to Covid, but more so because of developers building a new high-speed rail system that no one wants! Various campaigns are underway to rescue the street and area. For more information on Drummond Street and its restaurants, this article is good, if somewhat out-of-date. I did contact friends in London to see if they had more recent information, but the pandemic is, as everywhere else, muddying thewaters. If I get more, I'll pass it on in due course. For another, less-central version of the same cuisine I can recommend one restaurant well away from the tourist areas. Jai Krishna in Finsbury Park, north London is a popular Indian vegetarian restaurant and not only with vegetarians. I first visited in the 1980s when I lived nearby and made a point of visiting for lunch when I was in London in 2019. It hadn’t changed. Cheap but delicious food in simple but clean surroundings. 161 Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, London N4 3PZ, United Kingdom Tel. +44 20 7272 1680. Menu here. Image by me. Thali - Papadam (not pictured), Mixed Vegetable Curry, Tarka Dal, Chickpea (Garbanzo) Curry, Boiled Rice, 3 Poori, Yogurt, Mango Chutney and Sweet. - Image by me. Papri Chaat - Papri refers to crispy dough wafers served with potatoes, chillies, yoghurt and tamarind chutney, topped with pomegranate seeds - Image by me. For more on the history of curry, I can recommend Lizzie Collingham's Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). This is the American title. Elsewhere it is known as Curry - a biography. Finally, for this time, I hear some people asking who is Ruby Murray and did we find her? Here is an explanation. More to come; much more.

10 to 15 minutes is enough. I don't really time it. Usually until I've finished cleaning and preparing all the other ingredients for my dish. For tonights meal, it couldn't have been much more than five mnutes. Short marination times are typical in Chinese cooking.

I'd guess none of it is free range. It isn't aged. It can be lean or very fatty depending on how you want to use it. For stir frying most people use a very lean tenderloin cut. Some marinades help tenderise it, but often it's not necessary. I stir fried very lean beef tonight and the marinade was just garlic, ginger, chilli and Shaoxing wine, none of which tenderise meat, so far as I know. It was melt-in-the-mouth tender when cooked.

Beef with young wild matsutake, garlic, young ginger, chilli, Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, coriander leaf and scallions.