In this TV series, the vacuous Sarah Cox presents a competition which recently featured ‘Indian’ takeaways from different parts of the country … Edinburgh, Bradford (billed as the curry capital!), London and Newcastle. Notice the usual big city name missing and to rub it in the groups of diners judging were Manchester based. The one consolation is that we didn’t suffer the culinary pain of seeing the usual ‘pseudo’ Balti being served.

This week saw a gathering of curry royalty at Shababs, in the form of Richard Sayce aka curry author Misty Ricardo and Andy Lees who set up the highly successful Facebook page ‘The Balti Club ‘with a multitude of loyal followers. They were given access to the kitchen and under the watchful gaze of head chef Zaf Hussain, it has to be said that Richard cooked up a mean balti! What I love about these guys is that they champion British Indian Restaurant (BIR)cuisine and recognise  that food is about continual evolvement with enjoyment as the goal and that you don’t have to be eating  an exact recipe from the 18^th century for it to be ‘pukka ‘ food.  Not for them the posturing of the many culinary pseuds who purport to champion the ‘authentic’ roots of Indian cuisine. (Maddhu Jaffray anyone?)