The Daily Mail recently published an article on the top 40 destinations to visit in the UK. Pleasingly balti was third but yet again the photo of a  normal curry serving plate didnt do Birmingham’s iconic dish any justice.

Revealed: The 40 UK travel experiences to try before you turn 40, with stargazing in Northumberland No.1 and a spectacular Scottish road trip ranking second. 

Third place in the ranking goes to a visit to Birmingham’s Balti Triangle, the culinary birthplace of the ‘Balti’ curry, followed by a canal boat staycation in fourth.

For Fathers’ Day, my daughter thoughtfully bought me an interesting little book called ‘The Philosophy of Curry’ about the history of curry by Sejal Sukhadwala who apparently is a regular contributor to the Guardian Time Out and BBC Food. Furthermore, her book comes with a testimonial from the gushing Nigella Lawson who further gushes ‘a Magisterial Must Read’.  In fairness, it’s an interesting look at the history of curry until it comes to the matter of the derivation of balti. To quote … ‘based on the food in Baltistan’ (WRONG!) and not a word about it’s proper derivation and also clarifying the balti pan’s customized Birmingham shape, the materials used ie. thin pressed steel not cast iron etc and the critical fact that the balti is both fast cooked and served in the same balti pan. So Birmingham and balti gets yet another raw and uninformed deal from a foodie writer. Why am I not surprised?

There’s been a lot of publicity over Johnny Depp and his crew splashing out a supposed £50,000 on a ‘do’ at Broad Street’s Varanasi. Not sure who his adviser was but he could have had a real taste of Brum by buying 5,000 proper baltis with a naan bread as an accompaniment or perhaps more practically entertained his party of 50 for around a tenth of the price and got his champagne from the local offie … leaving over forty grand for a worthwhile charity. 

Perhaps his expensive shindig says something about the man!

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?)

The quest to preserve the authentic Balti and to educate the public, particularly those born in the noughties onwards, goes on.

In adding a chapter to a proposed new reprint of my book ‘Going for a Balti’, I commissioned a survey amongst Brummies about their awareness of the authentic dish. Alarmingly, less than a quarter surveyed knew what was the authentic culinary article.

I also noticed that the Visit Birmingham website, in its reference to Balti, showed restaurants who weren’t purveyors of the real thing and even featured shiny stainless steel dishes … balti blasphemy! In fairness, following my plea, they have rectified this so that, at least, visitors will be able to recognise!’

Good PR for Brum in an article in Canada’s Globe And Mail national newspaper. Part sponsored by Visit Britain it gave plenty of column inches to Brum’ s famous dish but what a shame the lead picture shows a shiny bowl that you could see your reflection in!

Well known Brum artist Andy Slater recently did a brilliant take on designing flags for different districts of the city. Great idea and good to see the one for Sparkbrook featuring a balti bowl in a triangle. If I had a grouse I would make the colours more Pakistani than Brazilian but it would be good to see Andy’s ideas taken up bringing a bit of real colour to the City’s scene!

I made a trip to Stirchley’s Balti Bazaar and it was a more than decent meal with one dish presented like  it had been cooked by the winner of Master Chef! Friendly service brought some excellent dips and crispy paid for poppadoms. Starters were a tender chicken tikka and a meat samosa … the latter full of spicy mince although the pastry casing wasn’t Great British Bake Off material. My Bazaar Special Balti was an excellent mixture of chicken, mushrooms, egg and aubergine … with the latter richly disintegrating into a tasty sauce far better than being served sliced and al dente, as often mistakenly happens with the purple prince of vegetables. However, the highlight was a Balti Chicken Korma which undoubtedly had the touch of balti nouveau cuisine … perhaps the start of a new trend!

The birthplace of balti, the Balti Triangle has at last been recognised thanks to Network Rail’s new signage at Birmingham New Street Station. It also recognises other truly unique areas of the second City featuring places such as Bournville, Chinatown, and the Gay Quarter. Fair play to the oft criticised Network Rail for treading where City Council orienteers have failed to tread!