Review: Darjeeling Express

Home Comforts in Soho

Methi Chicken, polao and a side salad

I’m glad central London finally has an Indian restaurant like Darjeeling Express. I’ve been eating at various Bengali (read: Bangladeshi) restaurants in the British capital for a while, and most of what I’d recommend is in East London. While many of these places do great food, like Amar Gaon or Dhaka Biryani, they’re small and geared towards casual meals. But Darjeeling Express is a fully-fledged restaurant, and somewhere I could go if I needed a smarter dinner venue. Even better is the fact that I wouldn’t be making any compromises on the food - the kitchen here produces amazing Bengali (and other Indian) dishes, despite its trendy Carnaby Street location. 

The Best Biriyanis in Aberdeen

All lined up for Biriyani Club!

A dish of fragrant rice cooked with spiced meat, biriyani is an old favourite of mine. In our family, it has always been celebration food. We usually buy biriyani from any one of Dhaka's numerous biriyani houses, or less commonly cook it - and I've posted my mom's recipe on the blog already. It's something I often order while eating out  in the UK, and a friend suggested collating my experiences for Aberdeen in one post. Something short and snappy - useful for folks who don't want to read long, in-depth reviews. 

I've been doing an informal biriyani tour of the town for a while anyway, so this post has an easy, happy challenge! I've stuck to some hard and fast rules throughout the process (see the footnotes at the bottom). This will be a live post, and I will be updating and reposting it as I eat at more restaurants. Hopefully old names will drop off and new names will appear. I don't know how many venues I'll list when I'm done...but I'm aiming for the top 5 right now. I will mostly limit myself to writing about biriyani here, rather than diverging into fuller reviews. Also, a big thank you to my long-suffering friends, who have often waited patiently as I photographed everyone's food :)

Delhi Food Memories

সবজি দিয়ে পনির 

Paneer with Carrots and Peas

Paneer with carrots and peas for a nice weekend lunch

I've spent quite a while attempting to recreate a fantastic paneer and mixed vegetable dish our housekeeper in Delhi used to cook. I've gone through various iterations - I added paneer to my standard Bangladeshi vegetable recipe (fail); and then I curried my vegetables like my meat, adding paneer at the end (another fail). What's finally been successful is this tweak of Kaushy Patel's recipe for mattar panner in the Guardian. I trust her cooking from my meals at Prasad, which is why I decided to look up her recipes after my failures. 

To her recipe I've added carrot and toned down the spices, almost halving the ginger and powdered coriander. I've also done away with the deep frying - because who does that at home? Our housekeeper's dish was a lightly-spiced everyday affair, so I've altered Patel's recipe to aline it to that philosophy. Patel does have a paneer and mixed vegetable recipe herself, but that is so heavily spiced that I'm ignoring it completely. The results below aren't exactly the real thing - our housekeeper didn't use tomato as a base - but the dish is satisfying enough that I wanted the recipe written down for future attempts. 

Ingredients:

• 4.00 cm of ginger
• 350.00g paneer
• 400.00g of tinned tomatoes 
• 2.00 teaspoons powdered chilli
• 2.00 teaspoons powdered turmeric
• 2.00 teaspoons powdered coriander
• 1.00 teaspoon powdered cumin
• 200.00 g frozen peas
• 1.00 carrot
• Salt, to taste
• Fresh coriander, one handful

Method: 

• Prep the ingredients first - chop and crush the ginger, finely chop the coriander and cut the paneer and into bite size cubes. Set each ingredient aside separately.
• Heat some oil in a wok - pouring in enough so that when the panner is added to the pot it is at least partially submerged. Test the oil temperature by adding a cube of paneer - if it begins to sizzle the oil is ready. Make sure to turn the heat down to medium-low before beginning to cook
• Add the cubes of paneer to the wok, gently turning each cube (I use tongs) as they fry to ensure they are cooked evenly. Remove the paneer cubes from the oil once they've begun to go golden on each side, which should take 3 to 4 minutes. Be careful - the oil will sizzle and jump
• Open the tinned tomatoes, and stab repeatedly with a knife to break up the flesh. Pour the fruit into the oil and mix, and allow to cook for a minute
• Follow up by adding the ginger, dry spices, fresh coriander and salt. Mix these ingredients thoroughly into the tomato, and cook on medium low heat for 5 to 8 minutes. The base is unlikely to burn in a non-stick wok, but do stir it a little every minute or so just in case 
• While the spice base is cooking, take out the peas and leave to soak in water 
• Boil some water in a kettle
• Chop up the carrot into bite size pieces
• Add the carrots to the wok, followed by the paneer. Mix and let cook for a minute, then drain and add the peas
• Pour in some boiling water to the wok - varying the amount based on how much sauce you want your dish to have. Turn the heat to high, and stir to mix everything together
• Bring the dish to boil, then turn the heat back down to medium. Partially cover the wok with a lid and leave to cook for 8 minutes
• Once done, turn off the stove and leave the dish to settle. I usually let the oil come to the surface at this point, and drain or scoop it away 
• Serve hot with plain boiled rice or flatbreads

Additional Info

If paneer isn't available near you, try this with another squeaky cheese - halloumi - using the same ingredient amounts as above. Halloumi is a lot crumblier than paneer though, so be gentle with it. I've had trouble keeping it together during pre-frying, and I would consider brushing it with some oil and toasting it in an oven next time. 

Review: Benares Restaurant

An Indian Michelin

Bite-size poppadoms with gooseberry, tomato
and pineapple dips.

I like to keep an eye out for Indian fine dining recommendations. The cuisine is often similar to Bangladesh's, and I like the idea of being able have a special occasion meal that isn't European. I was in London last month, and decided to drop by for lunch at Benares for a mini-celebration. I admit my choice of restaurant was mostly based on its proximity to a prior appointment, but I should also say that the Benares lunch menu was more interesting than the nearby Gymkhana's. £35 for three courses and some extras seemed perfectly reasonable for gourmet cuisine around central London, and there were Bengali style fish cakes on the menu that I felt I really should judge for authenticity! 

Review: Shri Bheema's

A "Desi" Brunch in Aberdeen

Chicken biriyani at Shri Bheema's, served with gravy
The best biriyani so far in Aberdeen city

Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, I don't actually know a lot about Indian food. Obviously, there is some regional overlap with Bangladeshi food, but beyond that a lot of what I know comes from road trips through India and food related recommendations from friends. Shri Bheema was one such recommendation, and I was lured to the restaurant with the promise of an unlimited buffet for Sunday brunch. Walking in, I had been looking forward to stuffing my face, but once I tasted the food I was honestly taken aback by how good the food was. 

Review: Dishoom

Upper Limits

"Thumbs Up do not do diets" 

I wish I meant upper limits in terms of food and experience. I don't. I mean upper limits in terms of patience. Don't get me wrong, my meal at Dishoom in Covent Garden was by no means a negative experience - kudos to the staff who handled an amusing hiccup in our meal very well - but I cannot recommend this place without adding a few words of warning. The first warning is about the queues. One Friday night, the hostess told me a table for two had an hour and fifteen minute wait. I laughed and left. This is a restaurant that does not take reservations for groups smaller than 6 - a seemingly effective marketing tactic that sees queues snaking all along the pavement outside. I've never understood why people put up with this. Plan ahead and book. If for some reason you haven't or couldn't, there are plenty of nice restaurants around that won't make you stand outside as advertisement. If you really do want to try the food, come back during a quieter period. As both friends in real life and bloggers online had recommended this place, this is what I did and dropped by for lunch on a weekday.

Top left, rose and cardamom lassi. Top right, water in steel
glasses! Bottom, Tamarind dip, didn't recognise the others.

Even then, the place was pretty full and we were shown to a table downstairs. I don't know what an Irani cafe should look like, but Dishoom gave me contemporary London vibes. A friend from Mumbai confirmed this - the interior was the closest imitation he's seen to an Irani cafe but it's not quite there. Initially there seemed to be a lot of pressure to order: we picked out drinks very quickly and were then asked about food orders twice in rapid succession. After turning our wait staff away for the second time things seemed to calm down. My rose lassi arrived, and I'm happy to report that it's the best I've had in England, dethroning Pushkar of Birmingham from the top spot. 

Review: Lasan

Consistency is Key

Our poppadum dips. At the top, a unique gourd based dip I've never had before.

I've been to Lasan twice now, once in late 2012 and again now in late 2013. It came highly recommended by word of mouth. They'd won a prize on some food show by Gordon Ramsay, and apparently their approach to Indian food was incomparable to the run-of-the-mill curry house. The skeptic in me was convinced by none of this, but I decided a restaurant with so many accolades was still worth visiting. Don't be mislead by their website - the Ramsay hysteria has died down and bookings no longer need to be made very far in advance, unless you're looking for a weekend evening.