Beautiful baltis
"Just look how fresh these are," yells Shibaz across the kitchen during a busy, noisy evening service at his Punjab Paradise Balti house. "Look at the quality - no fat or skin." He's referring to two, fresh, lean, white chicken breasts he's holding up for all to see.
"Some Balti chefs use leg meat. Others use frozen chicken. They're much cheaper. Not us," he confirms. "I've got a good supplier. The raw material has to be right - our Balti chicken tikka masala is one of the most popular dishes. We don't cook with ghee either - vegetable oil, much better."
His philosophy, proudly written on the menu, is "let your taste buds decide". Even the neon light sign outside the restaurant, high above the poppy-red awning, declares: "The best Balti in town."
Like the 100 or so owners of Birmingham's now almost legendary Balti houses, he has every right to be self-assured. On the cold January midweek evening when Chef visited Punjab Paradise, it was buzzing. By 7pm, having opened two hours earlier, all 72 seats were filled. Down the road, in what has become known as the "Balti triangle" - a £4 taxi ride south-east from the city centre - other balti houses were similarly packed.
"This is not really busy. The year before last we had people queuing every night outside the window!" says Shibaz.
His philosophy of not compromising on raw materials and good customer care has obviously paid off. Every time the door opened and another "table for four" walked in, Shibaz was there to offer New Year greetings and welcome his customers.
"Cutting back on the quality of the food to offer rock-bottom prices and pull in customers never pays off. If customers don't like your food first time, they won't come back - you only get one chance."
Shibaz - actually Mohammed Shibaz "but everyone just calls me Shibaz" - set up Punjab Paradise, his first restaurant venture, four-and-a-half years ago. He had spent several years in the restaurant trade and had run an Indian restaurant in Halifax for his uncle.
"I'm not Indian though," he quickly interjects. "My family are from Pakistan - the home of the Balti. My parents come from Punjab, near Lahore.
"Streams of people looking for work came to the UK in the early 1960s - my father was among them. But I stayed at home with my mother. After leaving school, I decided there would be more opportunities for me here.
"This place came up for sale after I'd done a stint in the open-air markets. Things haven't stopped since."
Raja Liaqat Ali has been Shibaz's full-time chef since opening. "I've trained him up - he's the business. I'm at the stove though, on his day off.
"We've got three other chefs. One does starters; one comes in for four hours a day to prepare the stock sauce; and there's a chef who's solely responsible for the naan bread," explains Shibaz. "The quality of the naan is as important as the Balti itself."
The exact naan recipe is a trade secret. He does concede, however, that they use yogurt and eggs besides the standard ingredients - flour, yeast and milk.
When it comes to the ingredients for cooking Baltis, he's less forthcoming. "The recipe for our stock sauce is a closely guarded secret. We cannot reveal that," he teases, pointing to a large pot balanced on the back of the stove from which spicy smells are wafting.
"I've combined home-cooking tips and ideas from my experience in restaurants to get the recipe - I cannot tell you exactly what spices we've used. But many of them are imported for me direct so I'm getting the best quality."
So what exactly is a Balti, and how is it cooked? While the same stock sauce is used for each of the dishes on Shibaz's menu, each particular Balti has its own key ingredients - marinated meats such as chicken and lamb, and fresh vegetables, pulses, black eyed beans, corn and so on.
Each day the meats are marinated and the stock sauce is prepared. For service, it is a matter of combining the mise-en-place in a beaten steel, wok-like bowl, the karahi, over a fierce heat.
The Balti derives its name, some say, from the region in Pakistani Kashmir, Baltistan. Others stick to the story that its originates from the word for bucket: Balti food should be cooked and eaten in the same utensil.
"Everyone has their own theory as to how the dish started. I like to think of the nomads living on the border between China and Pakistan, cooking what they've hunted that day in a pot. One pot, one fire - there you go - a Balti."
The high density of Balti houses in and around Birmingham can be explained by the fact that the Midlands has one of the largest Pakistani communities in the UK.
In the UK, Baltis have now reached cult status - hot on the heels of Emile Tissot Foods' Balti meals for the catering sector, supermarkets have recently launched Balti ready-made meals for the retail sector. But although it is a cult, there have been Balti houses in Birmingham for the past two decades. Today there are more than 100.
But is the Birmingham Balti authentic? This is the question on the lips of every Balti house owner following a damning article in the Independent on Sunday before Christmas.
"I suppose everyone has their own ideas as to what a Balti is. Back home, we cook all meat on the bone and the sauce would be drier," explains Shibaz, who maintains purists forget that food evolves according to what customers enjoy and the native foods that are available.
"At the Punjab Paradise we serve meat off the bone because people prefer it that way. And customers like a decent amount of sauce to dip their naan in."
He says the debate as to the authenticity of the Balti is "irrelevant because balti is here and now, alive and enjoyed by many people because of its informality, its value for money, but most of all for its freshness in which fresh spices - not Balti pastes - play a major part.
"You've enjoyed your chicken and mushroom Balti? Bring your colleagues when you visit the catering exhibition [Hospitality Week]," he urges.
Entrepreneur through and through, he pointsto the "Balti clock" made from an unused black Balti pan with shiny brass hands: "What about a present to take back to London for your office? £10.99? They were selling like hot cakes before Christmas."
