Even Austerity Cooks Need a Break

Last night with wife returning home extremely fed up with work, and having said to SC that post exams we would take him out to his favourite restaurant, we went to East is East in Preston centre. And I was happy to suggest it, as even austerity cooks need a break.

It is not a curry house, it is a restaurant, and a very good one. Their menu features the Anglo-Indian stuff like Baltis (sadly on the list as Balti's) and so on, but with plenty of more exotic dishes - lamb's brains and lamb's trotters (their designation) in the Punjabi specialities section.

We go to East is East for several reasons. The service is always impeccable without being intrusive. The surroundings are many notches above the too frequent cod Raj stuff found elsewhere. For three of us last night, with a decent tip, it cost £75 (just poppadoms etc as starters, a curry each, one rice, one saag aloo, two naan breads about 45cm x 25cm, one fizzy water, one jug of iced tap water). The naan breads are the best I have ever come across, giant moist things with the perfect blend of crispy bubbly bits and soft doughyness. The rest of the food is always excellent. And from the cook's point of view, or this cook's anyway, 'Indian' food is the hardest to replicate in the home kitchen.

I can make French food (maybe spending so much time there helps) that I hope would please a Frenchman; my Italian stuff is (pizzas apart) as good as we'd get (sometimes better says he immodestly) as we'd be served at our local trattoria. When we eat Chinese food locally at least we feel hung over next day even if not a drop has passed our lips, maybe from the MSG, and the things I make are often slightly more adventurous than sweet and sour pork etc beloved of the mainstream Chinese restaurant (we have yet to try a highly recommended one near my wife's office, frequented by crowds of Chinese students studying at her university). But I have never come close to making curries anywhere near as good as East is East's, or a few other places we occasionally use.

Perhaps that is the spices and herbs they use (fresh fenugreek leaves in my chicken dish yesterday) not always being in a very English kitchen cupboard. The time and care taken to make the base of so many curries is another factor. We have no tandoori oven for the naan breads of course, and re-heated supermarket jobbies are universally poor. This is the only food where I have been at all tempted to buy ready-made, but I resisted the temptation on principle and because I'm a bit mean. So for a proper curry of the East is East sort, we will still have to make our way to East is East.