Tender meat - spiced to savour

Chicken (left) Seekh (right)

He's big, he's bad, he has a beard (neatly trimmed).  NOT the kebab, but my friend Balraj, back from Punjab for a brief visit.  However, one can never have too much Punjabi home cooking so it was off to Lahore Kebab House to stoke up on cooking just like Mummyji (not to mention Auntyji) used to make - not mine (that's another story) but someone's obviously.

There must be some vegetarians in Punjab, but it is a regional cuisine which surpasses itself in meat.  Tender, beautifully spiced meat.  We had the advantage that Balraj is fluent in Urdu and therefore everything came exactly as we wished it to.

I placed myself entirely in his hands and we started with the masala fish.  Very good (it's all very good, to be honest).

It flakes - and is lovely and moist.

And looks so pretty on the plate.  Gosh, there must be some happy cats in Punjab.

This came first, closely followed by a couple of kebabs as at the top and below.


Seekh Kebab

 And accompanied by a chicken friend.

It's so yummy and it's been like that to my knowledge for the past 35 years or more (which is how long Balraj and I - separately - have been going there).  We both cast our minds back and remembered when it was a couple of formica tables in what is now the entrance area.  Many people go there from all backgrounds which is a delight.  And it is completely different from trendy places like Tayyabs where the food is nice but is not as good as LKH to my mind and where the clientele are, frankly, too up their own kebabs for their own good.  I've eaten at Tayyabs and, I may say, in very pleasant company, but it's just not proper.  And as my friend Dalston points out, they pack them in at Tayyabs to such an extent that whilst the food may be tasty (it's not far off LKH to be honest), it's very uncomfortable as well as being pretentious - or is that just true of most of the people who go there?

LKH is the opposite.  The formica tables remain.  It's BYOB.  Our arrival coincided with two East End/Essex UK white couples sitting on separate tables quite, although not very, far apart who evidently knew each other.  We (everyone eating on the ground floor) realised they were acquainted because they shouted a conversation across the space separating them, oblivious to the fact that there were other diners who were not of their party.  They were cheerful, jolly, and very, very loud!  However, as Balraj pointed out, seeing acquaintances and hailing them across the room (although perhaps not having a full-length conversation with them at volume) is a very Asian thing.  We were just laughing (well, we couldn't talk to each other because we couldn't make ourselves heard)  and, as I said, they were very jolly.

I felt like eating a nice dry curry, said Balraj - and I agreed.  My only proviso is that we should have meat, not chicken.  A couple of things.  One, I prefer free range chicken as a minimum and unless something is labelled as such the likelihood is that it's come from a battery farm - both cruel and fowl tasting - that is, not tasting of anything fowl, more like pappy, damp cotton wool.  Not worth it either from the point of view of taste or farming method.  Secondly, Asian restaurants have realised that many of their customers have a problem with bones.  Whereas people of Asian and other BME origins know that meat on the bone is likely to be more tender than otherwise, many people are wary of bones.  I could go into fish here but I won't.  Suffice to say that Asian restaurants invariably advertise chicken dishes containing breast meat.  This translates as hard cubes of solid protein.  A waste of time in my view.  I rarely if ever order chicken in a restaurant because I'm wont to roast a free range bird and then use it all up at home and I operate on the basis that restaurants are there to provide me with things I would not have at home.  A lot like this really.

A nice dry meat curry

 Long-simmered, tender, melting meat which fell apart on the fork.  Accompanied by...

Roti

Keep the roti coming until we say - no more, no more - and they did.  And with bhindi.

I'd had an unaccountable desire to try the keema mince.  Can you believe in 35 years, I'd never had it?  Ditto Balraj it turned out, so we shared a half-portion.  A bit like the half-portion of cake at Evin on Kingsland Road, the half portion of keema mince looked like this...

And tasted divine.  This would be a wonderful Shepherd's Pie, said I, with a little tweaking.  It is, said Balraj, this is exactly the way I make my Shepherd's Pie.

We couldn't fit anything else in (their kulfi's very good too).  So, it was off to trot around the East End whilst we looped the loop (took a couple of long cuts) and on the way found these delightful cottages which must have survived the Blitz and give a flavour of a Victorian East End largely bombed out of existence.

We ended up with one for the road at the Water Poet.  The bearded one will be back in December when I suspect (I'm pretty sure really) that it will be LKH again, with Dalston, and luring Scarlett and Rhett away from deep South to the wild East.  Any point of the compass, Lahore Kebab House is best!