One of our favourite sources of authentic Indian food is a 'sweets and savouries' shop in Preston. Radhe Krishna Sweets and Savouries - R K Sweets for short - offers a huge choice of Indian street food to take away: sweets, savouries and curries. And best of all, being a Gujurati Hindu establishment, everything is 100% vegetarian.
The sweets are the type that are heavy on condensed milk and sugar: delicious but best in small quantities. But for me the real stars of the show are the savoury snacks and the curries which are fully cooked but sold cold for you to take home and reheat.
The snacks include three types of samosa (of course), all delicious. But the more unusual snacks are even better. Petish is a fragrant little ball filled with potato and plenty of coriander. Batata Wada is battered potato fritters with plenty of spices. Aloo Tikki is a yet another type of delicious potato fritter. To name but a few.
When it comes to the curries, we really are spoiled. There are always at least a dozen different curries, all of which we can enjoy. Mixed vegetables in a spicy 'gravy'. Peas and paneer in spicy sauce. Aloo gobi, a fairly dry curry of potato and cauliflower. Another curry that is based on fresh okra. A lovely sweet curry with plenty of red peppers in it. A dry curry dominated by yam. And so it goes on.
But, for us, the star of the show is Manchurian, an Indian-Chinese dish that resembles vegetarian 'meat balls'. Made of carrot and cabbage, soy sauce is added to the recipe to darken the final dish as well as giving it a savoury tang. We had never seen anything quite like it but it is now one of our real favourites.
The meal is completed with all the usual sundries - rice, chapatis, puris, noodles, Indian pickles and chutneys. And don't forget their delicious coriander sauce, a sort of Indian 'pesto'.
What a treat to have such a wide range of authentic, delicious Indian food available just a few miles away.
The sweets are the type that are heavy on condensed milk and sugar: delicious but best in small quantities. But for me the real stars of the show are the savoury snacks and the curries which are fully cooked but sold cold for you to take home and reheat.
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| Part of the array of snacks and curries at R K Sweets large, airy shop |
When it comes to the curries, we really are spoiled. There are always at least a dozen different curries, all of which we can enjoy. Mixed vegetables in a spicy 'gravy'. Peas and paneer in spicy sauce. Aloo gobi, a fairly dry curry of potato and cauliflower. Another curry that is based on fresh okra. A lovely sweet curry with plenty of red peppers in it. A dry curry dominated by yam. And so it goes on.
But, for us, the star of the show is Manchurian, an Indian-Chinese dish that resembles vegetarian 'meat balls'. Made of carrot and cabbage, soy sauce is added to the recipe to darken the final dish as well as giving it a savoury tang. We had never seen anything quite like it but it is now one of our real favourites.
The meal is completed with all the usual sundries - rice, chapatis, puris, noodles, Indian pickles and chutneys. And don't forget their delicious coriander sauce, a sort of Indian 'pesto'.
What a treat to have such a wide range of authentic, delicious Indian food available just a few miles away.