Inspired by street foods of India
always someone who wants a quick bite. He cooked the food at home and plonked it out in the sun all day.”
In Pondicherry, they came across a woman making vegetable pakoras out of potatoes, aubergine and okra. Her husband was by her side, cutting up the veg, which she then deep fried in a batter of chick pea, rice flour, chilli, tumeric and salt. The finished snacks were lightly sprinkled with dry mango powder before serving.
Fish abounded in Kerala, with stalls selling pomfret, a flatfish, and mackerel. Aktar took time to quiz the street cooks, jotting down recipes in a book.
One of the marinades used by a trader on a beach – it incorporated chilli, tumeric, tamarind paste, garlic and salt – helped to inspire Aktar’s banana leaf masala fish.
It was on the same beach at night-time that he and Jabbar came across a fortune teller who used a parrot to predict the fate of passers-by.
Aktar recalls: “You tell the man your name, age and your father’s name. Then his parrots jumps out of the cage and pecks away at a pack of cards until he finds one he takes a liking to.
‘‘The parrot gives the card to the man and he tells your fortune. He told me to watch out for women. I can’t help it – it’s one of my weaknesses.”
All the action took place by the glow of lamps, families heading to the beach in the evening to cool down and catch the sea breezes.
“People were flying kites. You get the very rich and the very poor eating at the same roadside stall,” adds Aktar.
The informality of street food has been incorporated into Lasan’s second outlet, Lasan Eatery in Hall Green, where customers are encouraged to “pitch up” and tuck into snacks, dosas or a classic curry.
But the ideas behind the street food are also being applied to the more formal dining experience of Lasan’s signature restaurant off St Paul’s Square.
Aktar is a great fan of the F-word – “F” in his case, being for feast – but the 29-year-old curry maestro is also a fierce advocate of the A-word: that’s “A” for authenticity.
“Most of the curry in English curry restaurants is so different to real Indian food,” says Aktar. “What people refer to as Indian food is not Indian food.”
Take a jalfrezi, for example. It is a staple of so-called Indian restaurants up and down the land, sometimes good, often synonymous with bland gloop. Something got lost in translation when the marinated meat dish was adapted to English sensibilities.
Aktar says: “Jalfrezi in a typical Indian restaurant is pepper, onion, reduced onion gravy and green chilli. That is not a jalfrezi.”
His version uses a tomato-based sauce flavoured with pickling spices and scented orange: “There are roasted peppers, which are stewed in the gravy. The chicken is marinated in garlic, ginger, ground Kashmiri chilli, cumin, coriander and mustard oil. The chicken is seasoned with salt and roasted off in the oven, ‘feathered’ and placed on top of the sauce.”
The processes and practices mirror those used in India as closely as possible, with tweaks to satisfy modern sensibilities.
So ghee and saturated fats are replaced by oils, from corn, olive and rapeseed.
Ghee, essentially clarified butter, is often served with onions as a dish in India. “If you or I ate that, alarm bells would go off. ‘Heart attack. Heart attack. Heart attack,’” says Aktar.
He and Jabbar hope to revisit India later in the year, switching their focus further north, and are concerned about the growing influence of multi-national food brands. The times are changing.
“McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut are all moving in to India and I would hate to see the day where people choose McDonald’s over street food,” says Aktar. As we talk about the US-led food invasion, it is the only occasion the chef’s mood drops.
“It is quite upsetting. In the UK, we have seen the big brands come in and the independents go out and I would not like to see that happen in India.”
Neither would lovers of great curry in Birmingham.
* Taste of Birmingham continues today and over the weekend.
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