Part of Birmingham’s new vocational education initiative, the Birmingham Baccalaureate, includes instruction in culinary skills. Well known Balti Triangle restaurant Shabab hosted an instruction session for a video which will be used by participating schools.

Andy Munro, Chair of the Birmingham Balti Association said,

‘As soon as I read that curry and specifically balti was to be featured, I was determined to see it featured and cooked correctly. The concept of featuring balti was a masterstroke by those who have been developing the initiative. Balti is part of Birmingham’s culinary history, it is a truly multi cultural fusion dish and it is a healthy way of cooking taking little longer than a microwaved meal. Hopefully this latter point will encourage youngsters that fresh, tasty and convenient cooking doesn’t have to be microwaved!’

A film crew was recently in Birmingham to film yet another ‘Bake Off’ competition likely to be televised on ITV in early 2014. Filming took place at award winning Itihaus in the Jewellery Quarter and featured a French bakery, Maison Mayci, from Kings Heath who had reached the semi final of a national competition. Their idea was to fuse their pastry skills with Birmingham’s curry heritage to create a balti porkpie. The session was a precursor to their final product and they received advice from the owner and chef of the restaurant and Andy Munro.

Andy said,

“As you would expect the pastry was second to none and the pork used was from a top quality local Tamworth breed. However, we hopefully gave them some  good advice on introducing more colour and spice using red chillies, paprika and turmeric to name a few ingredients.”

Recently India played host to a British Curry festival ….. talk about taking coals to Newcastle! Apparently it was a real success and the locals loved the offer with Balti the named favourite dish. This will, of course, be a blow to all those overprice ‘authentic’ restaurants back in Blighty!’