The late Robin Cook’s declaration, in 2001, that chicken tikka masala was
Britain’s “true national dish” caused a bit of a stir at the time. But a few
years later his words have become a platitude, and no less accurate for
that.
Sixty years after Indian independence and the creation of Pakistan, there is
an enormous two-way flow of people, ideas and trade between Britain and its
former colonial possessions. But food is probably the greatest of all the
subcontinent’s influences over British life.
Where once Indian food was an exotic jolt to jaded northern European palates,
today British children grow up on spicy dishes that seem as commonplace as
fish and chips, just as happy to snack on poppadoms and chutney as on
Marmite on toast.
Ready-to-eat Indian dinners are now a £1 billion market and by some estimates
the average British person eats Indian-inspired food twice a week. Curry is
so much part of the fabric of our lives that it has even entered rhyming
slang. The music of Ruby Murray, a popular Irish singer of the 1950s and
60s, may be obscure but her name lives on.
Of course, the British have been enjoying the taste of India for far longer
than the past six decades. When merchants of the East India Company started
plundering South Asia, agents of the Empire soon acquired a taste for spicy
Indian food and brought it back to Blighty. It didn’t achieve great
popularity, but the groundwork was laid. Curry lunches in the officers’ mess
were a firm tradition long before chillies entered the mainstream.
The real explosion in popularity of Indian food began in the 1970s with the
arrival of Bangladeshis, fleeing their troubled country and bestowing on a
nation with a desperate culinary reputation the Indian takeaway and the
flock-wallpapered curry house. Bangladeshis still own the majority of what
we call “Indian” restaurants in Britain.
On the whole it is not that easy any more to make jokes about what the food
will do to your insides because the quality has improved to the extent that
total disaster is usually averted.
I was in one of my favourites the other day, a little place called Desh in
Highbury, run by second-generation Bangladeshis who boast that they use 32
herbs and spices in their food. Four of us ate like kings for £40 and the
owner even threw in some free Cobra beers because the chef was taken by
surprise by two orders at once and it took 45 minutes for our food to be
ready (some things never change). My chicken tikka masala was rich, creamy
and satisfying, right up to the point where I had eaten too much and felt
slightly sick.
Another great contribution to Indo-British nosh is the balti, brought to this
country by Kashmiris and Pakistanis. Balti is a style of cooking rather than
a type of food. The word translates as “bucket” and refers to the
flat-bottomed wok in which all sorts of dishes are cooked, fresh and
quickly, over a high flame.
The origins of balti are hard to pin down. There is an area in Pakistan called
Baltistan, but Andy Munro, the author of The Balti Triangle, a guide to
Birmingham’s now legendary balti-house district, says that arguing such a
direct link is like claiming that jam comes from Jamaica. According to some
accounts balti has its orgins among mountain tribesmen, but others claim
that it is pretty much a creation of the 1980s in Birmingham, where
Pakistanis and Kashmiris set up cafés to serve their communities. “Someone
had the brainwave,” says Munro. “It’s loosely based on how things are cooked
in various parts of Pakistan.”
Whatever the truth, the balti industry is booming, with more than 50 balti
houses in Birmingham alone. Balti tours bring in parties for cooking
demonstrations and dining. This year Rough Guides listed “getting lost in
the balti triangle” as one of the 25 top experiences of Britain and Ireland.
At the Royal Naim, Mohammad Nazir says that the food in his restaurant is
prepared in a similar way to that cooked by his mother when he was growing
up in Kashmir. He takes me into the kitchen while he cooks up balti desi
chicken. Rather than ghee, which is used in Indian food, Pakistanis tend to
prefer vegetable oil. “I’ll give it a bit more taste,” he says, spooning in
an extra dose of chilli.
Nazir, 39, came to Birmingham in 1984 to join his elder brother and in 1989,
as the balti house craze was taking off, they opened a restaurant together.
His brother has died but he has nephews working with him.
The restaurant, which has twice won national awards for best balti house, has
the original glass-top tables with the menu displayed underneath. “Still the
same. I won’t change anything,” he says. “A lot are changing, mixing it up.
But people come because they want the authentic experience. Some have been
coming here for 18 years.”
One of the few other customers on a quiet lunchtime is a white man who says
that he calls in every day on his way home from work at Birmingham airport.
“I have chicken jalfrezi most days,” he says. “I’ve tried most of the other
places but the cooking is better here.” It was delicious, though pretty
darned fiery, and the portion was so huge that I couldn’t finish it. Even
without beer I was as stuffed as an exhibit in the Natural History Museum.
Camellia Panjabi, who has been involved in Indian restaurants in Britain and
around the world for a quarter of a century, is the author of 50 Great
Curries of India, a book that she wrote to show the sheer diversity of curry
dishes and which has sold a million copies worldwide. The very word “curry”
has long been the subject of debate over whether it was an English invention
or adapted from an Indian word. Today there are Indian variations on the
word and the broad meaning is “a dish with gravy”.
She makes the possibly surprising assertion that the British palate is highly
developed. “British people travel to India and are adventurous enough to try
all sorts of food, while other nationalities tend to stick to hotel
restaurants,” she says. Our desire to try new things inspired the Masala
Zone chain of restaurants that Panjabi and her sister have launched to serve
Indian street food. “That’s where the tastiest food is – and we don’t get
that on the whole in the UK,” she says.
At the other end of the spectrum, Panjabi has been intimately involved in the
other story of Indian food in the past two decades or so: the relentless
move upmarket. She first came to Britain in the early 1980s to help to
launch the Bombay Brasserie in South Kensington. She and her sister now own
a trio of swish restaurants including Amaya, one of a clutch of Indian
restaurants with Michelin-starred chefs.
The first Indian chef to win a Michelin star in Britain was Atul Kochhar, now
chef-patron at Benares in Mayfair. Here each spoonful of pilau rice is laid
reverentially on one’s plate, and the lobster curry is an essay in succulent
decadence at £38.
The restaurant looks rather like a bland international hotel, despite
Kochhar’s claim that the water pools “reflect the Ganges” and at lunchtime
the place lacked atmosphere. But his sensational black dhal, made from an
old Punjabi recipe of his grandmother’s, was worth a trip in itself.
He grew up in Jamshedpur, the steel town cut out of the jungle of eastern
India by the Tata conglomerate that is in the process of acquiring Corus.
His father owned the catering contract and would often take young Atul to
work with him in the canteen kitchens. After training and cooking in India
he was headhunted for Tamarind, where he won his first Michelin star before
opening Benares three years ago.
“Whenever people have moved countries they have mixed their food,” he says. “I
can truly call myself a British chef, then an Indian.” The British palate
has changed a lot, he says, because people travel more, watch a lot of
cookery programmes and research food on the internet. “People are well
educated and well informed. I remember having an argument with a customer
who wanted me to cook prawn rogan josh. I tried to explain that it has to be
cooked with lamb. Gone are the days when you have to explain that.
“People have started feeling that Indian food is part of their diet –
day-to-day food.”
Whether it is a samosa from a station snack counter or poppadoms with chutney,
“right from childhood they are eating the food, and when you grow up that
way you are more discerning”.
Kochhar tries to use local ingredients and personally dislikes food that is
too hotly spiced: “I want to taste the food and then the spice.” He says
that the starting point should be to cook with salt and pepper, then use
spices “to enhance the flavour of the main ingredient, not to mask it”.
On the day I ate at Benares our national dish wasn’t on the menu, but there
was a starter of chicken tikka with foie gras and smoked duck breast – a
truly delicious Anglo-Indo-Franco creation that Kochhar explains was the
result of a challenge from another chef to do a spicy dish involving foie
gras. “And here it is: I put it on the menu.”
He does cook chicken tikka masala; both the Indian way, which is a form of
buttery chicken, and the British way, in which chunks of chicken are
marinated in spices and yogurt, cooked in a tandoor oven and then smothered
in a spicy pink sauce. He describes the occasions when he eats the British
version as “sinful moments. Terribly rich”. He confirms that the British one
is the “mother” recipe. Now, when he returns to India, people throw parties
for him at which he is expected to cook – “and they want me to cook chicken
tikka masala”.
For recipes from Anjum Anand's new book visit Times Online's Seasonal
Indian Food
Meat dishes (such as chicken tikka...) were invented by Muslims in India. Hindus are mainly vegetarians. Obviously, they'll claim it to be a Hindu thing, same as they've tried with the Taj Mahal (hindu temple).
"India’s greatest gift to Britain"
Can we call it 'Muslims greatest gift to Britain' ?
Mohammed, London, UK
This is a great article on Indian Food. I loved it as I love my Food. I am an Indian Student currently residing in UK for my study. I am amazed to see the value & respect my country & culture have got in the minds of the British community. It feels me a lot of proud on my Country, Its culture and our Traditions.
Devang Bhatt, London, Middlesex
England never had good food and now the bad became even worse as everything became spicy, actually, now everything HAS to be spicy. Is absolutely horrible, I can't eat any of it. I find funny to see those silly English TV chefs "cooking" things on TV and totally missing the point as nobody will ever cook any of it at home. Instead of showing food that nobody cooks at home, why don't they show and teach the BASICS of PROPER WESTERN EUROPEAN cooking? Is it racist? I work in a supermarket and the other day a lady asked me where the mixed herbs was as her daughter was going to make a pizza at school. A pizza? Doesn't she know a pizza takes OREGANO and not mixed herbs? Asian food became English national food by default. At the end of the day, eat whatever you want, go ahead and knock yourselfs out, just burn your mouth but do me just one favour: Don't you ever touch my lazanha or my pizza!
Fabio C, London, UK