curry

As part of India Week, we are trying a different Indian dish for lunch every day this week. Each day we will be eating something from the menu at Masala Zone and will be reviewing it for you. Today's dish is Bhel Puri.

And so we reach the final day of our adventure through Indian lunches. After four days of different spices, meats, vegetables, rices and sauces, we have unfortunately reached Day Five. For this final hurrah, Bhel Puri was on the menu. It had been described as a ‘crunchy salad' to us, and so we walked in expecting large, crisp leaves of lettuce and some crunchy curried veg. What we got, was very different.

We were met by piles of what looked almost like Rice Krispies. It was in fact puffed rice, mixed with sev, tamarind chutney, peanuts, tomato, onion, cucumber and mint. It was served cold, but the spices in the dish made it one of the hottest meals of the week. Usually eaten as a starter or a snack, the whole thing came to £4.05.

As part of India Week, we are trying a different Indian dish for lunch every day this week. Each day we will be eating something from the menu at Masala Zone and will be reviewing it for you. Today's dish is Chana Dabalroti.

For Day 4 of the most curry-tastic week ever, we had Chana Dabalroti on the lunch menu. This was the first dish of the week where we didn't really know what to expect. It had been described as a curried sandwich, but other than that, we went in pretty blind. 

As part of India Week, we are trying a different Indian dish for lunch every day this week. Each day we will be eating something from the menu at Masala Zone and will be reviewing it for you. Today's dish is Biryani.

So, we enter Day Three of our attempts to try every Indian dish known to man (or at least five of them anyway), and up today is Biryani. Expectations were high after two cracking lunches on Monday and Tuesday, so the dish had a lot to live up to.

As part of India Week, we are trying a different Indian dish for lunch every day this week. Each day we will be eating something from the menu at Masala Zone and will be reviewing it for you. Today's dish is butter chicken curry.

After yesterday's mammoth meal, we were expecting good things on Day Two of our culinary adventure in to Indian cuisine. On the menu today was butter chicken curry (as modelled in our very arty photo above), and it certainly didn't disappoint.

For £8.70 you can get India's version of chicken tikka masala, with a sauce of tomatoes, butter (unsurprisingly) and a top-secret blend of spices. Add in generous helpings of chicken and rice, and you've got yourself a lovely little meal.

As part of India Week, ForeignStudents.com's very own David describes his experiences of eating Indian food in Britain and how the curry has become one of Britain's national dishes. 

I have been eating Indian food for as long as I can remember. A weekly 'curry' was common place in our household, my father having discovered the joys of eating the spiced cuisine at London's Durbar restaurant- one of London's oldest and finest Indian restaurants- when he came to London as a student in the 1950s. The restaurant is still run by the same family!

Today, there are around 9000 curry restaurants in the UK. In London, Brick Lane is synonymous with Indian cuisine. For those of you studying in Manchester, it's the 'Curry Mile' in Rusholme, which has the largest concentration of Asian restaurants in the UK, with over 65,000 diners eating weekly at one of the Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan or Bangladeshi restaurants.