Coming close to the end of the holiday - An Indian, but not as you know it

Today was a travelling day. i.e. we weren't out to see much on the way, just to get from last night's dinner in Ramsgill to tonight's in Birmingham.

We left The Yorke Arms soon after breakfast and went to the nearby town of Pateley Bridge to fill the car with petrol. This is a picturesque town, but having pictures from our 2010 visit we didn't take many today.


Today's route looks like this:

We headed out of Pateley Bridge along the road for Glasshouses and Summerbridge this led to our second cross-over of the holiday route. This time it would only be a junction where just after RAF Menwith Hill we crossed the A59 that we had first travelled along two weeks ago today. We continued to follow this route through Pool in Wharfedale and from their to Leeds where we joined the M621 and on to the M1 for our journey south.

We stopped for a coffee at the Woodhall service station and carried on the M42 and M6 into Birmingham. Checking in to the Premier Inn for our last night away just after 2.00pm.

Dinner at Lasan

The final meal of the holiday is another influenced by watching Great British Menu. This time we had opted to eat at Aktar Islam's Lasan. Aktar competed three times in Great British Menu (GBM). In 2011 his fish dish - Sea Bass with Battered Soft Shell Crab went all the way to the Banquet. In 2014 his Lamb dish won the Central region heat.
 
The restaurant is in a lovely converted industrial space, very spacious and comfortable. 

We were presented with a pre-starter which was poppadoms with spicy lentil, sweet mango and yogurt dips. This was complemented by a Pani Puri, a delicious morsel, designed to be eaten in one mouthful, filled with a warm tamarind 'water' which added a wonderful sour taste to the vegetable filling of the Puri.

For starters we shared two dishes. The first, based on the winner of the 2011 GBM completion, was called Konkan Kekada. This entailed soft shelled crab, crispy ajwain and Kashmeri chilli butter served with a crab cake, tomato chutney and mango. This was amazing, the crispy crab along with the soft crab cake both declared the wonder of the creature while the sharp flavour of the ajwain made the mouth jiggle with pleasure as the crab melded with it. 

The second starter was called Achari Batair and was a lovely quail marinated in pickling spices and cooked in a tandoor with green herb sheek, dressed mooli and a cucumber and coriander chutney. The chutney, unlike those last night, was not sweet, but savory and full of the rich flavours of cucumber and coriander. The leg meat (we had one each) was crisp, and the breast meat was tender and juicy. 

For our mains we chose three dishes from the menu which was about the right amount, certainly we didn't leave any. The three we had were all delicious.

The first was Sikhandari Raan, which was a slow roast shank of Lamb with cumin tempered lentils and raitha. This is inspired by the 2014 dish Aktar cooked for the GBM. 

It was amazing. The lamb, the bone of which was at the edge of the dish for decoration melted as you eat it, the fresh herbs and vegetables around it meant that the soft lamb was tempered by the crisp veg. The lentils had a long warming flavour of cumin through them and offered another flavour which matched the lamb. I could have eaten two or three more of these, well perhaps I couldn't have, but I felt I could because it was so delicious.

Our curry dish was a Hydrabadi Biryani. My own visit to Hydrabad back in the 1990s prepared me for the goat which is at the heart of this dish. All I can say is that the goat Aktar has access to is very different from the goat that used to be a common dish in Hyderabad. That goat you could keep chewing for three or four days, I exaggerate a bit! This goat was soft and tasty. The goat was cooked in cubes in the richly flavour rice in a sealed clay pot. There were yet more lentils, but these with a different spice mix from the previous dish. We ate every morsel and enjoyed the wonderful flavours. 

The third dish was a vegetable one. It was simply titled Tandoori Gobi, I could work out from the title that it would be cauliflower cooked in a tandoor, but I had no idea how this would be cooked. The cauliflower was sliced along the line of the cauli-head, making it look like a slice of meat cut from the joint. Here it is a slice of cauliflower roasted with all the tandoori flavour and beautifully spiced. I like cauliflower as a vegetable, but I had never imagined it being able to taste as nicely, or more, as a steak. Amazing. 


The cauliflower was served with a quenelle of chuna curried lentils and a nilgiri tea flavoured korma sauce. I can't think when I was last so excited about a vegetarian dish. But this was really unusual and the flavour unexpectedly good.     

While the lamb was the richest of the dishes, and the cauliflower the most surprising it was the Biryani that I will remember most, and come back for the next time I can find an excuse to go back to Birmingham  

It was time for dessert and there was a nice selection. Drew, who often complains when I use Kaffir Lime Leaves in my cooking decided that perhaps Aktar could convert him to them. So opted for a Kaffir Posset. The posset was served with a raspberry shortbread with fresh raspberries and raspberry jelly and a raspberry sorbet. Drew felt that the posset was a great success, the lime flavour was not 'in your face' as it would be if the posset had been made of lime itself. By using the lime leaf the posset had a gentle citrus flavour which was not to much to overpower the freshness of the raspberry. 

Our coffee was served with two chocolate sweets. One was strawberry in flavour and the other was mint. Drew enjoyed them both.



Indian restaurants are so ubiquitous in the UK that it might be hard for any particular one to stand out. But it is possible because Lasan manages to provide a range of flavours like nothing I, a lover of Indian food, have tasted before.

We were pleased we'd made the effort to get here and enjoyed a pleasant walk back to the town centre and were in bed by 10 pm feeling very fulfilled.