Bengal Spice, Holmfirth

I was out for curry and beers with a group of friends who live in and around Huddersfield on Saturday night. We started out with a couple of pints in the Nook (a pleasant mild and a pale ale that tasted a bit farty, not great) then moved on to Bengal Spice for the curry.

Essential equipment

It's an old school curry house, one of those with a little bar area where they ply you with booze and bombay mix while the table is prepared. It took an age for us to be seated even though we'd booked, but we were kept well lubricated with pints of Cobra (some of which I'm sure never appeared on the bill).

Classic curry house setting

We stuck to poppadums and a serviceable pickle tray for starters, then moved on to assorted curries, most of us choosing lamb in one form or another. I shared a lamb jalfry balti, a lamb saag, pilau rice and a couple of chappatis.

Lamb saag

Everything was ok, nothing more really. The sauces were moderately spicy and were at least quite distinct from dish to dish, the garlicky saag being the better of the two. The balti dish suffered from the inclusion of great big slices of undercooked onion and was a bit greasy.

The chapattis were good, quite thin and elastic, perfect for mopping and scooping. I didn't try the nan breads but they looked a bit rubbish.

Service was good, friendly if a little slow and the final bill was insubstantial given the amount of booze we'd consumed (only around 15 pounds each). Not a bad place to go in a group on a weekend night, the atmosphere is lively, but I wouldn't make a special trip for the food.

6/10

Unit 2/6 Victoria Arcade
Dunford Road
Holmfirth
HD9 2DP


http://www.bengalspiceonline.co.uk/

Trying to cook the perfect steak (volume 3)

My little mission to find the best way to cook a steak continues. It's been a while since I've had one so I thought I'd treat myself to a little early Christmas present.

Here we have about 650g of T-bone from Farmer Copley's just outside Pontefract. Copley's is one of the new types of farm shop I tend to moan about; the prices are high and a lot of money has obviously been spent on the premises. The butchers counter was full of the usual ready trimmed, small not-very-exciting cuts but in this case they were happy to fetch a larger piece from out back and cut me something to order (unlike certain other farm shops where you have to order two weeks in advance in triplicate by fax just to get a decent sized steak on the bone).

In this case they'd already boned out all the main sirloin and fillet portions but did have some T-bone ends on offer. I'd rather not have the fillet section at all, but at least at the end there's not much of it to be bothering about.

On to the cooking method, so far this year I've tried the following:

- slow in a pan with a constant basting of butter followed by a long rest.
- fast over charcoal followed by a long rest.
- fast in a hot dry pan followed by a long rest (I haven't blogged this but it used to be my stock method).

...all of which have pros and cons, but this one is my new favourite, at least in December it is when I have no intention of firing up the barbie. I found the method on the Serious Eats website and you can find it here and here. These guys really know their steak!

Here is what I did.

Get a thick steak. At least one and a half inches. Anything thinner you might as well flash fry and eat in a sandwich.

Remove it from the fridge at least two hours before you plan to cook it, and salt it generously at least one hour before you plan to cook it. Salting early really does work. The Serious Eats link explains why, and if you look carefully at my photos (very carefully because they're rubbish) you can see the evidence. The photo above was taken about 15 minutes after salting. There are loads of tiny little pools of liquid on the surface of the steak where the salt has drawn out the moisture.

The photo above was taken about 40 minutes after the previous one. The liquid pools have disappeared either entirely or have left a little solid salt deposit, like the crust from evaporated seawater. If you don't believe me and want to get all Blumenthal-obsessive about it then go check out the time lapse video. I waited a full hour after salting because it took longer for the moisture to re-absorb for me.

When it was eventually good to go I heated up some neutral cooking oil (sunflower, groundnut or whatever) in a flat, thick bottomed frying pan until it was smoking. I don't use a ridged griddle anymore because although it makes your steak pretty it actually hinders development of the crust (because the surface of the meat between the ridges is actually kept away from the heat slightly).

When the oil was smoking profusely I threw in the steak, then kept turning it every thirty seconds or so for a few minutes. The exact time will depend on the thickness of your steak, you'll have to guess if (like me) you don't have a meat thermometer.

This is after the first minute.

And here we are after three minutes.

After 5 minutes I threw in a big knob of butter, then started turning it even more frequently.

After about six and a half minutes the crust was looking good and it came out of the pan and on to a warmed plate. I then covered it with tented tin foil and left it for about seven minutes.

The finished article, looking pretty damn fine. How about the inside?

Almost cracked it! I was looking for that dark, crusty almost charred but not burnt surface giving way to pink right the way through the centre. This was just very slightly overdone in the centre, but only just. The texture and flavour were excellent. The salt had permeated right through the meat leaving it perfectly seasoned, and it had a strong, minerally flavour. Really, really good. I also had the urge to eat all of the fat from the edges, as it was all lovely and creamy and more-ish, always a sign of a good steak.

With a bit of tweaking, this is the method for me. I'd probably knock 30 seconds off the overall cooking time for a steak the same size, and add the butter 30 seconds earlier. Other than that it was wonderful, and the meat itself very good too. I'll go to Farmer Copley's again.

An Arndale Odyssey (or Mexican in Manchester)

Manchester's Arndale Centre, giant among Arndale Centres, now boasts two entirely distinct places to eat Mexican fast food. One of them has been around for a while, and the other is a brand new shiny American import, only the third to open on these shores. I thought I'd visit both for lunch on the same day, in spirit of serious culinary investigation.

Taco Bell, Arndale Food Court

The American import is Taco Bell, brought to you by those lovely people at Yum! Brands (their exclamation mark!), more commonly known in the UK as owners of KFC and Pizza Hut. With a track record like that you'd be expecting great things from Taco Bell, right?

I should mention that I've been to Taco Bell before, in America, over eleven years ago. I'm a sucker for these places. Chain fast food restaurants always lure me in out of curiosity. The few weeks I spent travelling around the US that summer, high on Mountain Dew, were a happy daze of Wendy's, Taco Bell and Long John Silver's. They always promised so much, but inevitably ended in crashing disappointment. I actually remember Taco Bell as being particularly bad, so of course when I learned they had arrived in Manchester I was there like a shot.

As you alight at the top of the escalator you can't miss Taco Bell. It's very purple. An army of youths in purple polo shirts and purple baseball caps toil away under a huge backlit purple sign. Just head for the purple. It's the usual fast food set up, order individual items or make them into a meal with chips and fizzy pop. As I was having two lunches I passed up on the meal and just ordered two tacos.

They're cooking every order fresh at Taco Bell, which I suppose is to be praised, but it does mean your 'fast food' may not be particularly 'fast'. It some became apparent that most of the purple clad worker bees weren't really toiling away at all, rather stood around in the back staring at unseen screens with bemused expressions. After what seemed like an eternity my order eventually appeared. The anticipation was killing me.

Taco number one. A Mexican chicken crunchy taco supreme (£1.29). The chicken was almost a pleasant surprise. Almost, but not quite. On the plus side, it was moist and tender. On the minus side the sauce seemed to be flavoured primarily with salt, msg and something else chemically. The lettuce, cheese, sour cream and tomatoes just sort of passed by in a refreshing nothingness. To sum up; inoffensive.

Taco number two. A beef soft taco supreme (£1.19). The same deal, just with beef and a soft taco. This was worse. The beef really is quite unpleasant. You can see it smeared out the end on the photo there. It's completely ground to a mush, so has absolutely no texture to lend it resemblance to meat, and tastes extremely low grade. Have they invented chilli con carne dog food yet? If they have this is probably what it tastes like. To sum up; bad.

A not entirely resounding success, but I'll probably go back at least once more. There are plenty of other things on the menu to investigate, and I'm a glutton for punishment (I once ate a McChicken Korma Nan and I can't get enough KFC hot wings). Thank you Yum! Brands, thank you so much. As an aside Yum! describe themselves as 'the defining global company that feeds the world'. Which is scary.

3/10

Kiosk 5 The Food Court
Arndale Centre
Manchester
M4 3QA

www.tacobelluk.co.uk


Pancho's Burritos, Arndale Market food court

And so to the other food court in the Arndale Centre, at the opposite end in the little market area. This is where you'll find the small, local businesses as opposed to the 'defining global company's that feed the world' up the other end.

I've been to Pancho's before, and was happy to see that they've now expanded into a second stall just round the corner from the first. They don't sell tacos individually, only as three for £4.60 (70p-£1 more than three at Taco Bell). Five tacos is too many for lunch, but it had to be done.

Or at least it would have been done if they'd had any of the little taco tortillas. They didn't, so I had to order a burrito instead (£4 plus 50p extra for nopales). The fillings are exactly the same as I'd have had on the tacos, so it's still a fair comparison.

This was stuffed with rice, stewed pork, refried beans, sour cream, hot sauce and nopales. I've never had nopales before, they're slices cut from the leaves of a type of cactus. I think they were slightly pickled, as they added a juicy, tangy, refreshing note to the burrito which contrasted wonderfully with the creamy beans and spicy pork. 

The pork was moist, tender and tasty with a slow burning, fruity heat. To sum up: spicy, satisfying, more-ish.

7/10

Arndale Market
Market Street
Manchester
M4 3AQ

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Panchos-Burritos-Manchester/107688639271714

The Verdict

With the exceptions of menu availability and extreme purpleness Pancho's wins hand down. Much better food and better service for a price that's only slightly higher. Taco Bell doesn't claim to be authentic (it's 'Mexican-style' and 'Mexican-inspired'), whereas Pancho's does. I know nothing about Mexican food, but if both are telling the truth authenticity wins hands down this time.

Go to Pancho's Burritos and don't go to Taco Bell.

Cà ri gà (Vietnamese chicken curry)

Vietnamese curries are often an altogether subtler affair than Thai ones. This is almost a curry and coconut flavoured chicken stew. It's mellow and soothing with only a gentle heat, but not at all bland. The chicken releases its goodness during cooking to create a lovely savoury-sweet coconutty broth, and the spices provide fragrance.

Served with crusty french bread (baguettes made partially with rice flour are very popular in Vietnam) or steamed rice it's perfect when you're feeling jaded on a cold winter night.

I'm not going to claim this as a wholly authentic Vietnamese dish, but it definitely bears some resemblance to what you'd find in that part of the world. I mention this as authenticity and whether it matters is something I've been thinking a lot about recently, there's a very interesting post and discussion about it here and it ties in to my experiences searching for good Thai food in Leeds.

I'd love to hear any opinions on this. Does authenticity matter? Has the word become meaningless when used to describe food? Should restaurants describe their food as authentic when it isn't? How do you define what's authentic in the first place?

Back to the recipe, which will serve 2 generously and takes around an hour and a quarter from start to finish.

What you'll need:

4 bone-in chicken thighs
1 medium-sized onion
1 large carrot
a few potatoes
1 tin coconut milk
1 tbsp curry powder (I use Bolst's)
1 tsp turmeric
1 small cinnamon stick
1 star anise
1 tsp black peppercorns
3-4 large cloves garlic
1 large thumb-sized piece of ginger
1 tsp palm sugar (optional)
Fish sauce (I'm sure you can get Vietnamese fish sauce but I used Thai)
steamed rice or a baguette to serve

What to do:

1. Brown the chicken over a medium heat in a deep frying pan or wok for 10-15 minutes, then remove it from the pan and set aside. While the chicken is browning chop the onion.

2. Drain off most of the chicken fat from the pan, leaving just enough to fry the onions in then return the pan to the heat. Add the cinnamon, star anise and peppercorns to the pan and fry for a minute or so.

3. Add the onions to the pan and sweat them for around 10 minutes.

3. While the onions are sweating grate or finely chop the garlic and ginger and cut the carrot and potatoes into large pieces (keep them big otherwise they'll disintegrate too much). Open the coconut milk.

4. Add the garlic and ginger to the pan and fry for a minute or so, then add the turmeric and curry powder. Continue frying, stirring constantly for another couple of minutes. If it starts to stick loosen with a splash of the coconut milk.

5. Pour in the coconut milk then fill the empty can with water and pour that in too. Throw in the chicken, potatoes, carrot and palm sugar.

6. Simmer for around 40-45 minutes, until the chicken is starting to fall from the bones and the potatoes and carrot are soft.

7. Taste the sauce and season with as much fish sauce as you like.

8. Serve with crusty bread or rice.

Qila Khyber, Bury New Road, Manchester

I like this little bit of Manchester. Late on a Friday lunchtime it has a slightly raffish air, the streets are busy but not with your regular city centre suits. They're a more eclectic crowd, perhaps workers in the textile industry that still seems to exist in the back streets round here (at least in warehousing and wholesale if not manufacturing) and maybe dodgier characters fresh from a stint in Strangeways.  

All good and lively I thought as I legged it through the drizzle to Qila Khyber. This was my first visit here, I usually go to Moghul's Taste just a bit further up the road but I fancied a change. A good dose of rice and three was in order, I'd had no breakfast and was going to be at a beer festival come tea time.

I wasn't disappointed. Lamb karahi, lentils and keema peas were all spot on, distinctively flavoured and freshened up with a generous chilli and coriander garnish. Equally as good as at Moghul's taste and definitely among the best of Manchester's curry cafés.

I'd like to expand on the flavours, but to be honest I shovelled it down, in part due to hunger and in part due to nerves brought on by the angry faced man in a bobble hat who stared at me relentlessly in a slightly unhinged fashion, all the while inhaling bhajis at an impressive rate. The warm fuzzy feelings towards the local characters and recently released inmates were rapidly waning as I imagined the inevitable 'what are you looking at?' followed by upturned tables and general mayhem.

As it happened he continued to glare at me until his plates were emptied, then left without so much as a backward glance.

Madmen or otherwise I still like Bury New Road. It's got some of the best curry cafés in town and is handily positioned only a minor detour off my route home from Salford. Rice, three curries and a can of pop will set you back £5.20 at Qila Khyber.

There's also free on-street parking, it's handy for the prison and the show-offs even have a website. What more do you need?

7/10

19 Bury New Road
Manchester
M8 8FW


http://qilakhyber.foodkingdom.com/SupplierWebSite/21/Default.aspx

Bryan's, Headingley, Leeds

I've been very lazy of late. If something isn't reviewed within a few days of eating it I tend not to bother. I ate the meal in this review about a fortnight ago. As I said, lazy. The main reason for not reviewing stuff retrospectively is that the memory tends to fade and things can end up a bit revisionist.

Anyhow I'm ignoring my usual rules for three reasons. One, it's fish and chips which really isn't that difficult to remember. Two, it's fish and chips and I'm keeping up with the mission to review every single portion of fish and chips I've eaten this year (for the record this is portion thirteen. Oops that's quite a lot of fish and chips). Three, it was from a very well known chip shop and it wasn't particularly good.

Fish, chips and peas from Bryan's in Headingley. I couldn't fault the chips (well executed crunch/grease combo) or the peas but there were issues with the fish. It looks the part; - freshly fried and generously proportioned, but the batter was horribly soggy beneath the outer layer (as if the fish had been wet when dipped in it) and the skin had been left on. I had to scrape the flesh from the slimy, damp residual mess of skin and batter leaving that untouched in the tray like something picked from the plughole.

Lazy. Lazier than me not bothering to write it up for ages, lazier than any other Yorkshire chip shop worthy of the name. At around six quid the prices are hardly extortionate, but you can get better for less elsewhere in Leeds.

Has anyone been to Brett's recently? That was crap last time I went as well. The best chip shop in Headingley is almost certainly the little takeaway only place just down the little side street past the church.

5/10

9 Weetwood Lane
Headingley
Leeds
LS16 5LT

http://www.bryansfishrestaurant.co.uk/

Herby cheese scones, vegetable stew

It took me a good couple of hours to work out what I wanted to eat on Sunday. It had to be warming winter food, the weather was foul and I was hiding under cover on the sofa. None of the obvious things were appealing. Not lamb hotpot, not cottage pie, not toad in the hole, not roast meat and gravy, not even a curry which is rare for me.

Eventually it came to me, I wasn't in the mood for meat. I wanted a hearty meal that was hot and nourishing, but not rich, fatty or stodgy. My default setting in such circumstances is to reach for the lentils and get a pot of dal on the go, but that didn't appeal either. Instead I made some herb and cheese scones to serve with a simple vegetable casserole. The casserole was ok, but the scones turned out really well so I thought I'd write up the recipe.

It's a basic scone recipe, so hardly original, but the addition of fresh herbs and some sharp cheese makes them a fantastic accompaniment to a stew or casserole, vegetarian or otherwise. They are light, savoury and gently fragrant. Best served when they're fresh, warm and slathered with butter.

What you'll need to make 6 good sized scones (I made 8 but a couple were rolled too thin):

8oz self raising flour
pinch of salt
scant tsp of baking powder
2oz butter
1oz grated cheese (use something sharp and fairly strong, mature Lancashire would be good)
150ml milk, plus extra for brushing
1 dessertspoon mixed finely chopped rosemary and thyme

What to do:

1. Set the oven to 220 deg C and grease a baking sheet.

2. Finely chop the herbs and grate the cheese.

3. Put the flour, salt and baking powder into a mixing bowl.

4. Rub the butter into the flour.

5. Make a well in the middle of the flour/butter mix and pour in the cheese, milk and herbs.

6. Mix the whole lot together into a soft dough. Handle it as little as possible.

7. Roll out the dough to about 2cm thickness, cut out the scones and place them on a baking sheet.

8. Brush the tops with a little milk then bake in the oven for 12-15 mins.

9. When they're done they should be golden topped and will sound hollow if tapped on the base. Leave them to cool for a few minutes then eat warm.