Curry King To Lager Lord

FIRST he put the spice into our curries and now he's giving our lager a bit of kick.

Indian entrepreneur Charan Gill knows what makes the Scots tick.

Having arrived in Glasgow from a tiny Punjab village at the age of nine with virtually no English he went on to build a multi-million pound empire as our undisputed curry king. He sold his Ashoka chain for £16million and has now teamed up with a Bavarian premium lager brewer in Glasgow's East End.

He said: "It is a really exciting new venture. I heard about the West Brewing Company from boss Petra Wetzel and when she told me she needed investment I was delighted to get involved. West is the only Scottish lager brewer apart from Tennent's and is at the premium end of the market.

"We have six different kinds of lager and the on-site bar restaurant is going well. We are developing off-site sales by getting the lager into bars around Glasgow and are negotiating with a major distribution firm.

Charan, 54, encapsulates the entrepreneurial spirit of the Indian subcontinent. It is on course to overtake Japan as the world's third biggest economies within a decade.

Critics see outsourcing call centre jobs to India as the death knell for our service industries.

But thousands of Scots are taking advantage of increasingly strong trade links between the countries.

Charan was brought here by his father but it was his grandfather that inspired him to become a millionaire.

He said: "He told me that success was measured in terms of money and it stuck with me all my life.

"Things were tough when I was growing up. My father had left the village a few years before us to move to Scotland and work on the buses.

"My earliest memory was landing at the airport and seeing this bleak, grey sky and feeling the rain." Charan was so eager to earn a wage he ignored the advice of his headmaster and got a job at a Clyde shipyard.

He said: "Eight years at Yarrow's made me streetwise and introduced me to the Glaswegian culture. It was a great experience but I always knew one day I would work for myself."

By 1974 he was working in the Ashoka restaurant in the evenings after his shift at the yard.

By 1983 he was employed full-time there. He used wacky marketing ploys like finding a man called Rick Shaw to deliver takeaways and having a curry delivered by helicopter as he walked the West Highland Way.

He became a partner in the business and bought out most of the others. By 2005, the chain had 17 restaurants and was turning over £12million a year.

Charan sold up to concentrate on property development.

He said: "I just woke up and felt I had done what I set out to do."

Source : SundayMail

Full Recipe for Chicken Chasni

Apparently it doesn’t taste like an Indian curry. The taste is sweet and sour most probably due to the fact that the two main ingredients are mango chutney and tomato ketchup. However, India may already lay claim to this kind of curry as they have concocted their own hybrid in so called Chinese restaurants up and down major Indian cities. The fusion is known as ‘Chinjabi’ cuisine. But let’s hear it for Scotland’s Chasni which may perhaps be the first of its kind in the UK.

If you can’t get down to Glasgow, do have a go at making one at home. My recipe is below which uses the key ingredients for a Chicken Chasni. I’ll let you decide whether you think the CTM will always be flavour of the month or whether the Chasni is just a flash in the pan.

Chicken Chasni, Serves 2

Ingredients:

3 tbsp sunflower oil
2 onions, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
5cm/2 in piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp turmeric
½ tsp chilli powder
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, about 125g each, cut into bite-sized pieces
100g mango chutney
100g tomato sauce or ketchup
5-6 fresh mint leaves, washed and chopped
1 tsp lemon juice

Preparation:

Heat the oil in a saucepan or wok over a medium heat. Add the onions, garlic and ginger and fry, stirring frequently, for 5-7 minutes until they are light brown.

Tip in the coriander, turmeric and chilli powder and stir around for one minute. Stir in the chicken pieces and continue frying, stirring for 5 minutes until the chicken changes colour. Add the mango chutney and tomato sauce and cook for 2 minutes. Tip in 200ml of just boiled water and simmer for a further 3-5 minutes until the chicken is cooked. Stir in the mint leaves and lemon juice and serve with plain basmati rice.

Source : Manjumalhi.co.uk

Chasni curries favour over tikka

Forget deep-fried, battered Mars bars, savoury haggis and... well, Irn-Bru.

Scotland lays claim to conceiving Britain's most popular dish.

And no, its not fish and chips.

It is Chicken Tikka Masala.

Sanjay Majhu, owner of the Harlequin Chain of Indian restaurants, said the mild curry was created decades ago in a Glaswegian kitchen by Asian immigrants catering to Western palates.

He said: "What they were trying to do was knock up a quick curry, so they used tomato soup.

"And they called it a Chicken Tikka Masala, because once you added the spices to the tomato soup all of a sudden it wasn't tomato soup, it was something else."

"But it's definitely one of those dishes that didn't come from India."

The popularity of Chicken Tikka Masala shows no signs of slowing down south of the border in England and Wales.

But there is a another curry threatening to take its crown in Glasgow.

It is called Chicken Chasni and in Sanjay Majhu's chain of Indian restaurants it easily outsells Chicken Tikka Masala 10 to one.

So just what is in a Chasni?

Sanjay said: "It doesn't taste like a curry. In fact it tastes like anything but a curry.

"In fact, it is more like a sweet and sour chicken, that the Chinese have.

"But it is an absolutely beautiful dish because it has Indian spices running through this sort of sweet and sourness.

"I'm just surprised it has become a number one."

Word on the street has it, a former chef, now a restaurant owner, named Balbir created the Chasni.

I hit the streets of Glasgow to track him down.

And let's just say he was pretty easy to find.

After more than 30 years he is still in the curry trade running a restaurant called Balbir's.

He said the Chasni came from catering for people who did not think they liked Indian food.

"The Chasni that is popular in Glasgow is my recipe. I created it in 1982," he said.

"I tend to experiment a lot in the kitchen. There were people who said, 'I can't eat Indian but I like Chinese', and that's how the Chasni came about.

"I tried a few different versions but the one that became the most popular wasn't the one I liked, it was too mild for me."

Truly Scottish

Having tried the sweet and sour Chasni myself, I wondered just why Balbir's brand of unique Indian cooking is so popular with Scottish diners.

Paul, who's been a customer for years, explained its success.

He said: "Balbir is not a follower. He tends to blaze his own trail and others follow him. If you are here you should come and try one. Because afterwards, you'll try another and another and will never leave."

And while Chicken Chasni is clearly a hit in Glasgow, you would be hard pressed to find it in curry houses outside of Scotland.

So for now, if you're looking for a truly Scottish culinary experience, forget haggis, tuck into a chasni.

Source : BBC

* Click here for Chicken Chasni recipe *