news
Beef dressed as
lamb in Scotland
According to a leaked report by the Food
Standards Agency (FSA), more than a third
of curry restaurants in Scotland have been
passing off beef as lamb. Investigators from
the Scottish Food Enforcement Liaison
Committee – which is part of the FSA –
tested dishes at 129 Indian restaurants and
takeaways across Scotland for 18 months.
It found that lamb was substituted with beef
at 46 of the establishments sampled. At
33 establishments there was no lamb at all
in the dishes, while the remaining 13 used
some lamb and cheap cuts of beef, according to the report, which was published in
the Sunday Mail. The FSA's report said:
"The results from the survey confirm that a
significant proportion of lamb-based curries
offered for sale in Indian, and similar style,
restaurants and takeaways were falsely
described as they contained either no lamb,
or a mixture of lamb
and other meat. The
sale of such curries contravenes the
Food Safety Act and
the Food Labelling
Regulations."
L
ovepickle
is a new
Indian chilli
tomato pickle,
available in four
strengths (mild,
medium, hot and
extra hot). The
product can be
purchased
from
specialty
food stores
14 T A N D O O R I
Counterfeit IDs are
fooling restaurant owners
Sophisticated
counterfeit IDs are fooling
restaurant owners into
employing illegal workers. Four Bangladeshi staff members at a Bournemouth restaurant
were arrested during a series of
UK Border Agency raids last week.
The business is now facing a fine of
up to £10,000 per worker unless it
can prove it carried out the proper
right-to-work checks, reported the
Bournemouth Echo.
Mo Islam, manager of Cinnamon,
said two of the workers had provided fake passports as identification. The other two had only
started the night before the raid,
and he was waiting for their IDs to
be provided.
Islam said: “People don’t understand why this happens; it is a
huge problem for all caterers at
the moment. We don’t have equipment for checking whether these
documents are genuine, and they
look exactly the same. One of them
even provided a National Insurance
number and we started paying tax
on it. It is a problem for us employing these people as you don’t know
what you are getting. We have all
the paperwork so hopefully we
shouldn’t have any further problems from this, but I don’t know
what can be done about the wider
problem.”
Three of the workers were arrested
for outstaying their visas and the
fourth for entering the UK illegally.
On the same evening, a Nepalese
man working in the kitchens at Gurkha 2 in Boscombe, was found to
have outstayed his visa and was
also arrested.
Ferndown councillor Steve Lugg
said: “If illegal workers are conning
businesses into taking them on it is
a big problem. Unless it is proved
otherwise, as a councillor I feel we
need to be getting behind these
businesses. Times are tough, and
with all the legislation and checks
businesses have to wade through
on this issue it is very hard for them
to be experts.”
Asian Junior Chef Challenge
now accepting entries for 2013
The Master Chefs of Great Britain and Cyrus
Todiwala are teaming up to launch a new culinary
competition, the Asian Junior Chefs Challenge.
Described as “Cyrus’s brainchild” by Master
Chef Clive Roberts, chef-patron of the Old Forge
Restaurant in West Sussex, the competition
hopes to get young British chefs to better understand the importance of Asian cuisine.
“The £2.5b per annum industry is a melting pot
of culture, but chefs dabbling is not enough –
they need to immerse themselves in the cuisine
as there is so much to learn,” said Todiwala.
The competition is looking for teams of three
students and one lecturer, and is backed by colleges including Westminster Kingsway, University College Birmingham and West Herts.
Todiwala also added that the competition “will be
looking for evidence that they have considered
sustainability, provenance and authenticity. More
importantly, for the first time in a UK competition
we will deduct points for wastage.”
Each team will be expected to demonstrate their
technical expertise, creativity, knowledge and
appreciation of Asian cuisine by preparing a fourcourse authentic pan-Asian meal.
The prize for the winning team includes dinner and an overnight stay at the Hilton London
Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 as well as a week in
Bombay, Delhi and Pune.
Sponsors of the event include Cobra Beer, Carlson Rezidor, Oliver Harvey, Tilda, Schwartz and
Café Spice Namasté. The sponsors will provide
everything needed by the contestants, from
ingredients to uniforms.
June / July 2013
Tandoori_JUNE JULY PART 1 - C.indd 14
10/07/2013 17:23