If you want to embrace Yorkshire tradition with a Sunday roast or just add a little bit of Yorkshire to your Indian tapas, there will be something to please you on the new menu at Kerala Canteen.
Former Master Chef contestant Bobby Geeta lovesYorkshire and Kerala. He and Chef Abdulla Khader Allingal Siddique have embraced these passions and drawn upon Michelin experience when designing the latest menu.
I must admit that I was cautious when I was invited to try some of the new menu items. I am not a great lover of Sunday Roasts, unless I cook one myself. There are some things you know just how you like it. It can be worrying to think that someone is playing around with a formula that works.
On Sundays, the restaurant serves an ultra roast; a large Yorkshire pudding filled with T-bone steak, signature beef & bone marrow curry, chilli & tamarind cauliflower, hasselback potatoes – served with Kingfisher Premium Ultra beer. Other meats and vegetarian options are available, but the beef has proved particularly popular.
I went midweek and instead combined the new dishes in the tapas style approach to eating that fits this restaurant so well. I ordered a Beef Curry Pie and the new Mini Broccoli Masala Dosa from the tapas / starter menu and the Half Roasted Garlic Chilli Chicken to provide a range of the new dishes. I added a Paneer and Peas Masala, not new but something I had not tried yet, and – an essential for any meal here as far as I am concerned – a flaky Canteen Porotta.
The small, soft Yorkshire pudding was filled with the extremely tasty beef and bone marrow curry and topped with a scattering of grated cheese. The gravy had seeped into the pudding, which after all contains the same ingredients as a porotta. While the bottom was infused with curry the top stood proudly Yorkshire. I had worried the cheese would be a step too far, but the small amount added contrast to the rich dish. It all came together in a warm, spicy richness, with the pudding crust and cheese
adding texture.
The masala dosa was another unexpected success. I like dosa but the rice pancakes never match the promise of their first few bites. Their large size and potato-based fillings can become repetitive after a while. Here the dosa was small and folded like a small crepe. Infused with organic beetroot, it had taken on a lovely rose hue. Inside there was potato but there was also a generous portion of spiced broccoli, all brought together by a thick, squash-based sambhar rather than the usual thin sauce. I will be back for more of these.
Having already had Yorkshire pudding and beef, I had gone for the roast chicken. The Yorkshire connection here might be through Sunday roast, or it might be through the jerk chicken of Chapeltown Carnival. It struck me that the spicing was almost Caribbean, without the extreme heat of scotch bonnet chillies. The marinade had infused and seeped well into the meat. Slow roasting meant you did not get the scorching associated with grilling jerk or peri chicken and could really appreciate a great marinade. It was served on a bed of hasselback potatoes which sliced perfectly. The dish was finished with onion gravy, containing both local white onions and small, pickled, Asian onions.
The paneer and peas masala had been recommended by our server who was pleased to claim this as her favourite dish. She had shown further joy when I added a porotta for mopping up the rich sauce. The paneer was perfect; firm enough to hold shape but soft enough to enable the spices to infuse the silky surface. The very rich sauce, enhanced by small, sweet peas, was something I won’t forget in a hurry.
Another dish I will be eating again.
We had shared the dishes between two. My partner had accompanied his meal with a mocktail, a Ginger & Jaggery Nojito, which was beautifully presented and proved to be a complex flavour combination. I went for the Peacock Cider, although I later noticed the Malabar Giant draught IPA. Named after the Keralan giant malabar squirrel, every purchase of this beer includes a donation to the Yorkshire Wildlife
Trust, one to be tried on my next visit.
We could have stopped here; we had eaten plenty, but the dessert menu is also new.I was sorry to see that the jaggery infused sticky toffee pudding has gone, I guess it takes effort and people tend to prefer cold desserts after curry, but there are some interesting new additions. We opted for the Pistachio & Pepper Semifreddo and the Dark Chocolate Delice with Matcha Dust. The pepper on the pistachio dish and the matcha on the chocolate add good savoury notes to both. We ended up sharing desserts. The delice was extremely chocolatey and the pistachio was very creamy. Together they went very well but I felt the delice would have benefitted from some cream or ice-cream and the semifreddo from some bitter chocolate shavings. Together, they were perfect.
The bill for all this came to £85; excellent value for food and drink of this quality. We went away full, happy and looking forward to our next visit. If anyone is wanting to go out for roast dinner, I might even suggest a trip on a Sunday.
Photography by Debbie Rolls.
