Curry, chips & the British working class

The Buddha of Albert Road on the significance of chips in modern British curryhouse culture

We’re a democratic lot at the Nirvana Restaurant. We let everyone have a say. Particularly when it comes to important matters like what goes into our club menus. Our team meetings are long and laborious affairs due to language challenges. Our Head Chef barks out instructions in Hindi and English which he calls Hinglish. Our kitchen linecooks speak a mixture of Tamil, Arabic and Punjabi. The senior kitchen porter speaks Nepali. Our Tandoori Chef insists on speaking only Bengali, in the Syleti dialect. Our delivery drivers are native English speakers. Our resident beer expert pretends he knows no other languages apart from Konkani and Telugu. Our butcher speaks Marathi. And our spice guru speaks only Urdu.

In the end it took us over four hours to decide if chips were to feature on Nirvana menus. It originally took us four and half minutes to decide there would be no chips when our Tandoori Chef lurched into the room in an ungainly manner. He was pissed, which means he did not have a winning hand during the previous nights poker game. We told him of our decision to ban chips from our menus. Glaring at us like a wounded boar he immediately accused us of being elitist and anti-working class. ‘Shame on you,’ he screamed stabbing the air with his masala-stained forefinger.

            ‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ I said mustering as much serenity as I possibly could, which wasn’t much. ‘We’re not doing chips because by the time they reach the customer it will become a soft mass of potato. The linecooks don’t want to do it.’

            ‘Screw the cooks,’ he snapped at me. ‘Morons! Morons all of you! The whole idea behind our restaurant is curry – or have we forgotten that?’ he said popping a handful of painkillers into his mouth. At least I think they were painkillers, I can never tell with our Tandoori Chef. ‘You can’t talk about contemporary curryhouse culture without making some references – however oblique – to the humble fodder of the British working class, called chips’ he said loftily.

            ‘Why are you so late for the team meeting? You’re always late,’ asked Maschili, our resident spice expert at the restaurant.

            ‘Obviously I’ve arrived just in time to prevent a catastrophe,’ said our Tandoori Chef. ‘Without chips – and its chips by the way, not French fries - British curryhouse culture would be very different. Let me explain,’ he said putting his feet up on the table.

And he did. For two long hours. This is what he had to say.

By the end of World War II Britain had plenty of bombed-out cafe’s and chip shops. These derelict cafes were purchased by Indian sailors. Britain’s ethnic minorities were already well established in the fish & chip trade. The earliest fish fryers had been Jewish immigrants in London’s East End, and virtually all chip shops in Ireland and Scotland were owned by Italian immigrants. In the 1950’s and 60’s, Chinese and Greek Cypriot immigrants, as well as Indians, began buying them up.

Our Tandoori Chef explained that when fish and chips were first sold in the nineteenth century, it was seen as ‘slum food, the sort of grub that whores and hustlers ate as they came off the beat’. I notice a few of the Nirvana crew roll their eyes in resignation. Our baker, in charge of creating the naan bread, parathas, puri’s and pakoras, whispered to one of the delivery drivers. ‘I knew whores, hustlers, deviants and drunks had to come into the story somehow’ he said. ‘That little pervert could be talking about Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa of Calcutta and somehow whores, hustlers, deviants and drunks would miraculously appear.’

            ‘Hey, dipshit,’ screamed our Tandoori Chef. ‘Why don’t you take the cotton wool out of your ear and stick it in your mouth. You buddy need to remember what Oscar Wilde said.’

            ‘What did good old Oscar say?’ asked our baker. He, like the rest of us, had long given up trying to teach our Tandoori Chef the rudiments of civilised manner.

            ‘Ignorance is a strange bloom. Once lost it can never be recovered. I’m trying to help you man, with your distinctly pathetic lack of understanding.’ We watched as he popped another handful of painkillers into his mouth.

Our Tandoori Chef explained that fish and chips was gradually taken up by the British working class and by the 1950’s it made a welcome change for many families from the sheer boredom of roast on Sunday, hash on Monday, cottage pie on Tuesday, hotpot on Thursday and stewed steak on Friday. In working class towns there would be a mad rush for the fish and chip shop after eleven o’clock as the blokes made their way home after a couple of pints in the pub, after a hard day in the fields, coalmines and factories. At the weekends the chip shop would be full of working men buying a quick lunch on their way to the football game or dog tracks.

The ex-Indian sailors would give these fish and chip shops a lick of paint and set about building custom. The continued the tradition of selling fish and chips, pies and tea. They simply tacked curry on to the old menu. Gradually customers became more adventurous and started to try curries. ‘In this way the British working class discovered that a good hot vindaloo went down well on a stomach full of beer, and so began the tradition of eating curry after a night out in the pub.’ As the working class became increasingly fond of curry, these small chip shops threw out the British dishes from their menus and turned into the first curryhouses and inexpensive Indian restaurants.

            ‘So you see my dears. Without chips there would be no curry culture in Britain,’ said our Tandoori Chef triumphantly. ‘There is nothing more satisfying than chips and curry. It’s sublime actually. Not that any of you philistines would know’ he added cattily.

So, in the end we all voted, again, to keep chips on the Nirvana menus.

Our chips are cooked in spiced sesame seed oil, known in India as gingelly oil. You can find chips in the sundries section of the menus.

You can download all Nirvana menus from our website www.nirvanrestaurant.co.uk

Muscular and robust, that’ll be our balti

Sanjay Kumar of the Nirvana Restaurant on Albert Road explains why we don’t get invited to many parties and the reasons why we love our balti

Within the vicious and cut-throat closed of British curryhouse cooks there exists a small irritating minority of snobs, chefs and linecooks who laugh derisively at those of us who love the balti curry. They think only common and ignorant ‘English customers’ order balti on the menu. We don’t like food snobs at Nirvana because we think the balti is one of finest creations of the curryhouse world. A person who opts for our club balti is choosing a superior curry; muscular, robust, aromatic and full of gutsy flavour.

 At Nirvana we love our balti and can get quite passionate about this curry which emerged during the heydays of the 80’s. The Nirvana crew once had to drag our inebriated Tandoori Chef out of an Iftar party in the back of Brick Lane. It seems our boy became somewhat miffed when an oily little Bangladeshi chef working at one of those hideously expensive, pretentious places in London suggested that a balti wasn’t actually an authentic Indian curry. In reply our Tandoori Chef tried to stab the little man with a shrimp fork through his tongue. A truly terrible scene ensued. As we dragged our man to safety he screamed out using gutter-language Hindi that all balti-haters were ‘jungle peasants with rough habits. You people are rubbish. Rubbish!’ he screamed like a demented nanny. ‘You’re all half castes, the bastard children who don’t know the food of their own motherlands, think you know better. You don’t. You never will. Fuc.......’

Our boys are not invited to many Iftar parties these days. Our wretched Tandoori chef ensured we are forever viewed as drunks, deviants and misfits by our curryhouse peers. Oh well. Stuff happens.

The balti was concocted by Pakistani restaurateurs in Birmingham during the 80’s. Snobs like that horrible oily little Bangladeshi our tandoori chef tried to stab like to joke that balti means bucket but those who take their balti’s seriously know that the dish is named after the heavy dome-shaped wok in which the curry is cooked. Actually.

The Nirvana balti is made with fresh meat, king prawns, shrimps or vegetables cold marinated in forest spices, added to a slow-cooked medium-thick sauce of caramelised white onions and garlic, green stem ginger, curry leaves, roasted tomatoes, fresh ground spices and, most importantly, fresh coriander leaves and stalks. Plenty of coriander stalks. A curry house chef’s balti recipe is distinctive by the way he assembles the dish. He never divulges this to anyone; not even his wife. It’s a treasured, sacred secret.

Our balti dish is rather special and cooked by our Head Chef; the genius tyrant who commands our kitchens. Very briefly, in Nirvana work culture the Head Chef prepares and cooks only special House dishes; these are curry dishes he and his team have perfected and modified since they began cooking in British curryhouses in 1962.

For our Head Chef to insist on personally cooking our balti is an indication of how much he loves this wonderfully punchy, robust and incredibly satisfying curry.

The only people who know the exact recipe of our balti is our Head Chef and his right-hand man, the Tandoori Chef, who is also responsible for marinating the balti meat. The only thing any of us know know about our balti is that somewhere along the cooking process our Head Chef adds a mixture of satkora (a type of South Asian grapefruit) juice and rind, tamarind pulp, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce which gives our balti a slight but distinctive tangy taste. It goes down so well with a glass of Merlot or a pint of summer ale.

If you would like to know more about how to pair wine and beer with curry simply visit our website and sign up for our free guide, ‘Rice, spice & grapes and hops.’ It’s the definitive guide on what to drink with curry.

Kitchen gossip has it that our Head Chef won the recipe from a brilliant (but spiritually flawed) Pakistani curryhouse linecook during a game of poker. It was 1983 and they were playing in Bradford, in a dingy flat next door to a brothel. Both establishments were owned by Chinese Triads. On that auspicious day India, under the captainship of Kapil Dev, won the third Cricket World Cup at Lords. It was a good day for Indian cricket and a very good day for our Head Chef who walked away with his winning balti recipe. Head Chef practiced relentlessly with his hard-won recipe until he got his balti just right.

Our balti is served with basmati pilau rice, not naan bread (let us know if you prefer naan bread instead. It’s your balti, devour it your way). Our Tandoori Chef is adamant the tradition of eating a balti with naan bread started when 80’s Yuppies discovered the joys of eating leftover balti for lunch at work. ‘Best cure for a hangover,’ he says. And he should know the old lush. It seems the spice rush rejuvenated the Yuppies and their productivity increased at work. The Yuppies used the naan bread to scoop up the balti using one hand while yapping on their newly acquired gadget called a mobile phone with the other.

In curryhouse tradition a balti is classified as a dish belonging to the Anglo-Indian school of cookery.

If you would like to receive full details of other Anglo-Indian curry dishes cooked by the Nirvana crew please sign up by leaving your email details on our website.

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Indian chai

Talking tea on the train with Pisces Valerez

‘Chai garam. Chai garam.’

1997, Assam. India. A boy’s voice echoes from the Assam Bengal Railway platform, calling to the trains sleepy passengers. Roused from a miserable attempt at sleep, I watch weary travellers take a single rupee from pocket and purses and thrust it through the bars of the compartments open window. Seconds later they are holding a terracotta cups, brimming with steaming liquid. Like parched wanderers in the desert, they bring it to the lips. Instant bliss. Adored by some, reviled by others, chai - the type of tea drunk by the masses as well as the maharajahs - is one of the constants of the Indian subcontinent.

Some of my posh European friends, when they think of tea picture an elegant porcelain pot with exquisitely aromatic Assam or Darjeeling leaves steeping inside. Milk, sugar cubes, and slices of lemon ready to serve if called upon. A rather British sort of arrangement. My more bohemian friends always visualise something slightly more utilitarian. But the teabag has failed to penetrate very deeply in India, particularly the places I like to visit.

1998, Sussex. England. On the train from Brighton to Victoria I got chatting with a young mulatto by the name of Pisces Valerez. Having spent a chilled weekend in Brighton town Pisces was returning to London where he was studying geology at Imperial College London. He comes from a long line of engineers and was expected to join the family business after he finished his studies. He told me he was saving up to go travelling in India. Pisces had grown up listening to stories of India from his father and grandfather, who had studied at the prestigious Indian School of Mines in the city of Dhanbad in Jharkhand. He told me that one of the things they reminisce about during family get-togethers was the taste of Indian chai. As a boy growing up in the Nuyorican community of New York City’s metropolitan area Pisces has always wondered what the hell chai was. What is chai? What are its magical ingredients? Ingredients which have remained in the memories of his father and grandfather for so long. What special alchemy produces it?

And so, for the next hour or so I described to Pisces the work of the chai-wallah in India.

Squatting by a brazier of glowing coals, the chai-wallah reaches for his favourite pot, a much dented, fire-blacked thing made out of the cheapest metals possible. Deftly he knocks out the remains of the last batch of chai, wipes out the pot with a dirty rag, and sets it carefully on the brazier. He adds several cups of water (I tell Pisces it’s best not to ask its source) and two ladles of buffalo milk.

As the milky mixture begins to heat, the maestro reaches for a large red tin of Brook Bond Red Label, the best CTC tea money can buy. ‘Whats CTC? Never heard of that’. I tell Pisces that CTC is the name given to what’s left of the tea after the finest leaves have been sold for export. The letters stand for Crush-Tear-Cool process that these remains are subjected to. Into the pot go several generous pinches.

Now, I tell him with relish, is a critical step. Out comes another tin, this one full of coarse honey-coloured crystals of partially refined sugar. In goes a spoonful. And another. And another. And another. You lose count. The mind boggles. With effortless grace, the maestro reaches for a bidi, a small cigarette, hand-rolled in a leaf of tobacco or the cheaper saal. Now it’s time to wait and have a smoke. There is no hurrying this last, all-important part: the cooking.

Many minutes pass. At last the bidi has burned down, and the chai is ready to be served. A serious-looking young boy wearing stained pajamas steps forward: the maestro’s assistant. He deferentially hands his master a mismatched cup and saucer, both chipped. With practiced showmanship, the wallah flourishes a strainer and pours the tea. Following the example of your fellow patrons, you pour the piping hot chai into the saucer and a take a careful sip. As the liquid hit’s the spot I guarantee Pisces that a feeling of sublime well-being will spread through his Latino body and soul. He gives me toothy smile, claps his hands together and promises to send me a postcard after his first taste of chai.

In the old days, before bottled water became common in India, chai was one of the few ‘safe’ things to drink, and it still is today. I said to Pisces that one of the many surprises in store for him in India is just how refreshing a steaming clay pot of chai can be, even on the most sweltering of Indian days and nights.

I told him that in the middle of the afternoon, when he’s been out roaming the dusty streets for hours in search of the perfect Kashmiri shawl or the quintessential sandalwood box, a cup of chai will always revive his body and spirit in an almost mystical way. ‘Probably the reason why your father and grandfather still talk about chai in the way they do’ I said. I added that whenever I’m in India I always try to find time to sit on a simple wooden bench beneath the shade of a giant banyan tree. Take a sip of hot chai, relax, and watch India go by. He promises me that’s what he’ll do too.

Pisces and I exchange emails and numbers as we approach London Victoria. We promise again to stay in touch. As we go our separate ways I wonder what Pisces will make of India. The experiences that await him. How he will react to the many facets of the many mosaics that make up India’s ancient culture. I wondered if I’ll ever see Pisces again. Listen to him talk about the things he did, the friendships he forged, the things he witnessed. And the chai he drank.