Barmy and Balmy with Beer and Balti in Beeston

Last Saturday evening saw me meeting up with my great friend Emma who was over from Holland with her man Ronald for a holiday in Yorkshire via her parents Elizabeth and George in Beeston, Nottinghamshire. I had been working all day and had arranged to meet Emma and Ronald in the dried hops bedecked and rather nice Crown Inn pub for a catch up and a few beers before going on to the Cottage Balti – Fine Indian Dining restaurant in Beeston. The Harvest Pale and Tranquillity beers went down rather well and we all enjoyed a good chin wag about the Dutch city of Leiden and Emma's recent time in Hungary. Emma, with a mischievous glint in her eye, said she had a present for me but it was at her parents' house. Knowing Emma's naughty sense of  humour I was intrigued to see what that might be. I wasn't disappointed.

Prior to meeting her parents that evening we indulged in some English fun just for our Dutch friend Ronald's sake. It was purely a spontaneous 'when in England do as the tipsy English do' moment or two. It is important for foreign visitors to integrate and quickly adapt to our loopy social customs I feel. The balmy evening weather was proving suitable for some summery silliness.

Eventually we weaved our way down Chilwell Road and the newly laid tram lines. We weren't in any danger of being killed by a tram as they aren't running yet, just at the latter part of the testing stages. Finally, after ten minutes of walking and silliness we arrived at the Cottage Balti. It was very nice with an attractive and stylish interior. It was only seven o'clock so it wasn't full yet, just a smattering of couples and George and Elizabeth – Emma's mum and dad awaiting our arrival.

Whilst I took a few pictures of our group in the restaurant I was so busy enjoying the food and company that I never got round to taking any of our meals. We started with poppadoms and trays of pickles and chutneys and decided to each order a dish which we would all share along with rice, peshwari nan, pillau nan and paratha. Incidentally, as my spell checker is now rebelling wildly at all these names, my spellings are lifted directly from the Cottage Balti website menu.

From what I remember, our shared mains dishes included: Tarka Daal, Bhuna Meshi Gosht, Fish Tikka Chana Zarl, Chicken Jeera, Makhani Chicken in a tomato based sauce and Shambar Lamb. The very tender and trimmed lamb (mutton?) curries and the fish curry were the overall favourites among our group. Amongst the delightful dinner chat were Emma and Ronald's amusing tales of a recent adventure to India and of their exotic experiences restricted only by bouts of chronic diarrhoea and projectile vomiting. Oh how we laughed!

We finished our restaurant experience with some sumptuous desserts. Mine was a wonderful chocolate and chilli dish.

A few minutes before we were about to leave there was a man's voice (fairly deep, loud and grumpy) from the table behind us. I couldn't see this man but felt that I had suddenly been transported back through time to the 1970s – a period in which many people had started to go to Indian restaurants. Back then, a night of decent folks' culinary adventure could easily be ruined by the antics of pissed up blokes finishing off a night of drinking and coming in mob handed to have an 'Indian'. The 1970s uncultured 'culture' was to drink even more pints of lager and challenge anyone in the boisterous (and invariably racist) group to eat the hottest curry – a Vindaloo.

The rude man behind us said to the woman he was with “I don't do posh!!! I wanna Vindaloo! 'ave they gor 'ny lager or Guinness?” I was half expecting him to ignorantly call over the waiter with a condescending and demanding “Oy Gupta!” – a character from It Ain't Half Hot Mum. Thankfully we paid and left having had a splendid time and a splendid meal. I sincerely hope the throwback 70's man was an extreme rarity in their fine dining restaurant clientele.

Oh yes, the present! I'd almost forgotten. Knakkers. Emma had brought me some knakkers all the way from Holland and some Trappist beer. Cheers Emma!

The Curry cure. A tale of a head cold and curry.

I’m a bit under the weather at the moment with a bad head cold that’s gone on to my chest causing me to feel bunged up in my head and have irregular, sea lion impersonation - coughing fits, some strong enough to wake the dead and attract many a female sea lion. Then there’s the odd nosebleed from blowing my nose so often and the constant flow of mucus… enough said about that.

I’m currently keeping Beechams and tissue manufactures in employment and last night I pulled together some ingredients to knock this wretched cold on the head and return to normal good health and clear breathing opportunities. Pass the Olbas oil.

So, in a moment or two of inspiration I ripped up the remains of a very tasty cooked 'Willow Farm' chicken and chopped up a pungent pot pourri of purification potential prepared for the curry pot. In went the generous amounts of ginger, garlic, lemon peel, lemon juice and coriander. They all rested in a casserole dish and I mixed the lot up thoroughly and popped the lid on and stuck it in the fridge. Then I went to bed as I was too tired to cook it and eat it. Like you do.

I‘ve been doing two half days of overtime at work to help out and be a mentor of a new young man on our meat counter and on my return bus journey home today I actually fell asleep and nearly missed my stop. Thankfully the driver knew where I normally get off and woke me up. He shouldn’t have kissed me though, not without shaving first. Ahem, après slumber on le bus, I made my way home via the local Co-op supermarket and then went off to bed for  a much needed afternoon kip. That was after I had staunched another sudden nosebleed with a dainty wad of toilet roll. I hate feeling ill!!!

Tonight I added made my own special Saag Masala cooking sauce prepared loving for hours in my cosy home kitchen. Saag, or palak, dishes are spiced purées of spinach or other greens common in northern India. The spinach leaves came direct from my one acre kitchen garden of herbs and seasonal vegetables. This is regulalry visited by culinary celebrities in search of inspiration and it is spoken that Madhur Jaffrey herself often has sleepless nights dreaming about the perfect kitchen garden that is mine, all mine. You can’t have it all Madhur luvvy.

So, dear salivating readers, I lovingly puréed the spinach leaves, thinking all the while of a nourishing curry to come, and I nonchalantly flicked in a good  extra handful of garden fresh coriander leaves for herbal depth. A generous twist of freshly ground green pepper finished the dish magnificantly. The evening sun was shining romantically on my French style patio furniture as the heady aromas drifting from the kitchen began their miraculous healings. Food certainly can heal. For an apero I cracked open a chilled bottle of Cobra beer and listened to the soperific sound of the gentle waves lapping the idyllic shoreline nearby. Life can be beautiful even with a cold.

Back in the kitchen, for a bit of zing, I added the tangy juices of a bright green lime and a clean, sharp tasting lemon to the dish and  dotingly placed  the  delicious ensemble into the Aga. A nearby wood pigeon cooed a contented evening coo as the rosy twilight turned to amber gold of late evening and cast its mellow warmth on the chateau next door. The curry dish was sublime and upon reflection I conceded that the spinach was indeed, done to perfection. Madhur would have been proud, so proud.

Confession: Actually I opened a jar of Sharwood’s Saag Masala and stirred it into the gorgeous mix of chicken, ginger and garlic and stuck it into a pre-heated oven, gas mark four, for half an hour. As simple as that. In the meantime I cooked some fragrant and delicate basmati rice (from my own private plot in the Himalayan foothills of course) and enjoyed a simple curry. Tomorrow I will über whiff of garlic but tomorrow is another day and I have a one acre kitchen garden to take care of now and that cooing wood pigeon will be splendid simply served with English pod fresh peas and perhaps a mèlange of spring greens. All washed done with a chilled flinty noted Chablis from my estate in Burgundy of course.

A service charge? What service charge?

On the Tuesday after the play has finished The Lace Market Theatre hold what is known as The Crit – an opportunity to discuss the merits and themes of the play that was on the week before. It is a great chance for cast and crew to get back together and it is traditional that we go out for a meal that evening to celebrate the performance.


This time there were a fair smattering of vegetarians in the group so we pre-booked the Kayal restaurant on Broad Street in central Nottingham. It is not like your average Indian restaurant. They specialise in Kerala Cuisine. Their own description sums the place up nicely.

‘Kayal, the Kerala backwater Cuisine Restaurant, offers a cuisine that is very unusual and different from the rest of the others. Cuisine at Kayal is mildly flavoured, spicy and gently cooked, offers several gastronomic opportunities for those willing to experiment with the local cuisine of Kerala. Be it seafood, rice or other meat dishes, the emphasis is on ‘Healthy Food’.

Our big group of eleven were made very welcome and ushered through to the back of the restaurant to a long table. It was all nice and atmospheric but the lighting was so low and dim that several of us had to borrow a mobile phone to shine a light on the menu to see what to order. A lot of the dishes I had never heard of and so choosing was quite an adventure.

A lot of the group went for the Masala dosa – one of the most famous of the South Indian Brahmin dishes. It is a large rolled rice and lentil pancake with a filling of seasoned potatoes, onions and peas. This came with a small selection of dips and was a starter course.

For my main course I chose the Njandu curry – a seafood based curry with crab meat and spices cooked in a coconut sauce. It tasted delicious but I was surprised to find that the crabmeat was still in the shell and very difficult to eat properly in the gloom. I didn’t want to splash curry all over me by fiddling with the bits of ‘still in shell' crab. The coconut based curry sauce was slightly spiced with paprika and cumin and I liked the lemon rice that I chose to accompany the curry.

The general mood at the table was jolly and we enjoyed some laughs mis-quoting lines from Abigail’s Party and having chat about “What’re you planning to do next?” Michelle who played Sue had already auditioned for The Accrington Pals that very night!!!

The restaurant closes at 11pm so by about 10.50pm we had all finished eating and drinking and asked for the bill. It came in a wooden little box and once we had sorted our individual monies out we were short by about £16. It turned out that the restaurant had added a service charge on (?). There was a general consensus that we weren’t paying such a large charge (that we weren't told about in advance) and ended up paying about half after a discussion with the waiter. His attitude was a bit off and he clearly wasn’t happy about our decision. I don’t go out to restaurants with big groups often but I thought it was cheeky to just slap this charge on when they were getting about £250 plus from us anyway.

Other than that incident the meal was a pleasant night out with good friends from the theatre and in general the food and service at the restuarant was very good. They also have a branch on Granby Street in Leicester.