He's the Firestarter

Fiona Whitty discovers how Birmingham's baltis are more bostin than ever

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What you've been tasting before probably isn't the real deal," grinned chef Zaf Hussain. "It's probably a bad imitation."

Zaf was preparing me a proper balti at his Birmingham restaurant Shababs (shababs.co.uk). The "real deal" is cooked quickly over a fierce flame in the same metal dish it's served in.

Today's pretenders, said Zaf, stew vats of curry then spoon it into balti-style dishes to make it look authentic.

This matters as the whole idea of the balti is its speed. For this, the dish must be made of thin-pressed carbon metal to allow heat to spread evenly and with a flat base and handles to aid stability on the hob.

Flavours infuse the metal, so the results taste even better over time.

And Zaf should know. Shababs, launched in 1987 by his Land Rover factory worker dad and older brother, is one of the longest-running restaurants in Birmingham's Balti Triangle, an area that's a 20-minute bus ride south of the city centre where the balti was first created 50 years ago.

Back then, emerging chefs originally from Pakistan and Kashmir, wanted to turn customers over quickly so they swapped the traditional long and slow curry making for the new speedy method - and the balti was born.

"When Shababs first opened, there was a pub across the road called The George," local balti expert Andy Munro told me over lunch there.

"These places were unlicensed but people could bring in their own booze.

"The guys - mainly Irish - would come across from the pub at closing time clutching pints of mild."

Andy, who's just released a book called The Balti: Its birth, Its Boom Years, and Beyond, is trying to secure "traditional speciality guaranteed" status for the Birmingham balti, meaning only curries cooked in the original way can use the name.

To show me how it's done, chef Zaf invited me into the Shababs kitchen as he cooked the ultimate chicken balti.