NICOLA RAYNER stations herself at the splendid Alishaan Indian Restaurant in Dorchester

WE Brits have taken curry to our hearts and our stomachs. Regularly topping the nation's favourite food charts, the dish is sold in more than 8,000 restaurants in Britain, which are visited by two million people each week.

Every year £2 billion is spent in curry houses - about £70 per second -while Marks & Spencer sells 18 tonnes of chicken tikka masala weekly. Scientists at Nottingham Trent University have even suggested that people can actually become addicted to curries, because they arouse and stimulate the senses, providing a natural high.

But how much do we know about our favourite food or the people who serve it to us?

For a start, Indian' cuisine is, in fact, something of a misnomer, for Bangladeshis run the vast majority of the Indian' restaurants in the UK. In the early 1970s, the war that led to the creation of Bangladesh created huge numbers of refugees.

Thousands of them, particularly from the region of Sylhet, migrated to London to look for work. Some of the earliest restaurants were opened in London's East End, a place that is still famous for this type of cuisine and is now dubbed Banglatown, with bilingual street signs and curry houses galore.

"Most of the Indian restaurants' - about 98 per cent - are Bangladeshi," said Masuh Uddin, co-owner of Alishaan, located next to Dorchester West train station, "and most of them are from Sylhet. Certainly, all the curry restaurant owners around here, apart from the Gurkha restaurant, and towards Bournemouth and Poole are from Bangladesh."

Masuh, who was born in Sylhet and also owns King Balti on Park Street in Weymouth, runs Alishaan with his business partner, Zahangir Alom, who was born in the East End.

The pair opened Alishaan - which means majestic' - in June this year.

Having been in the UK for 25 years, Masuh, a trained chef, is quite frank in his explanation of the popularity of curry. "Any other food is mostly bland," he said.

"When you eat our food you find the flavour includes the sauce and the meat. We do a lot of marinating that changes the whole taste of the food.

If you eat a steak you can still taste the blandness inside the meat unless you put mustard or something on it."

One Bangladeshi dish, which is marinated in spices and yoghurt before cooking, is the tandoori king prawn, a house speciality at Alishaan and our starter.

A tandoor is a cylindrical clay oven used in Bangladesh in which food is cooked over a hot charcoal fire.

Modern day tandoors, explains Masuh, tend use electricity or gas instead of charcoal.

"It's kind of dry cooking, like roasting," said Masuh. "Before cooking we marinate things for about 12 hours. When you marinate it, and then you cook it, it produces a texture."

As a large percentage of the land in Bangladesh - over 80 per cent on some occasions - can be under water, it is not surprising that fish features as the major source of protein in the Bangladeshi diet. Another staple across the country is, of course, rice. Indeed, there is a saying that translates as; fish and rice make a Bengali.' However, the dishes served in Alishaan are not solely from Bangladesh.

"We do cook in all sorts of different styles," said Masuh. "Our food compared with northern India and Sri Lanka is spicier. In northern India, there is the mild food like pasanda or masala. In the south, they tend to eat hotter dishes like jalfrezi.

"Dhansak is more popular in Malaysia. Ceylon is from Sri Lanka, which is a bit hot and flavoured with coconuts."

A house speciality meanwhile is the murgh zalzala, a fierce dish in which the heat comes from the naga, a very hot Bangladeshi chilli, which, the restaurant gets from Portesham of all places.

"In the South West, they think of Indian food and they think it's hot because of the spices," said Masuh. "But spices aren't hot; the only hot food is from the chilli. But you will still find all the herbs and spices are meant to give the texture and flavour."

There are, Masuh explains, hundreds and hundreds of spices used in Indian and Bangladeshi cooking -his supplier is based in Swansea - and among the spices they use are turmeric, curry powder, cumin, coriander, cloves, cinnamon and bay leaves.

"Some people prefer hot food, some people prefer mild food," said Masuh. "The most popular dishes are the jalfrezi, the garlic chilli chicken and the fallguni."

The bright red chicken fallguni, which packs quite a punch, is among the dishes we are served for our main course, alongside a mild mishti badam, which is grilled chicken in a rich, creamy almond base sauce. Then there is the tawapanner, an unusual but tasty dish that consists of strips of chicken or lamb fried with a combination of fresh peppers and spices, but served with a mild cheddar cheese.

This dish, like many others, was born of experimentation in the kitchen over here. Indeed, since the Anglo-Indian culinary revolution, Bangladeshi chefs have developed a number of inauthentic Indian' foods, most famously, of course, chicken tikka masala.

Balti, too, was created over here. "It started in the Midlands and is a kind of Pakistani dish," said Masuh. "It's best to eat it with nan bread or chapati, so you can eat it with your hands."

Our meal at Alishaan is also served with the house nan bread which is stuffed with onions and flavoured with cheese and coriander. It, like the other foods, is light and delicious. We go away full, but not too full.

Before we leave, I am interested to hear what Masuh and Zahangir have to say about the representation of Bangladeshis in the recently released Brick Lane.

"When they make a film, if they want to keep it bland and true, people will get the message. But if they add spice to it, sometimes that can taste good," said Masuh philosophically.

Curry, it seems, is not just a dish, but a way of looking at life.

Alishaan can be found on Great Western Trading Centre, Dorchester, DT1 1RD, call 01305 268368 for reservations or enquiries.

Alishaan Basic Chicken Curry Recipe Ingredients 1kg of chicken pieces, skin removed 2 large onions, finely chopped 1 stick of cinnamon 6-8 cardamom pods 4-6 bay leaves 2 tsps turmeric powder 1 tsp curry powder 1 tsp coriander powder 4 tbsps minced garlic and ginger tsp cumin powder Salt to taste litre vegetable cooking oil Chopped coriander to garnish Method Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the finely chopped onions. Keep stirring, frying the onions until they start turning gold. Add the stick of cinnamon, between six and eight cardamom pods and four to six bay leaves.

Stir them until the onion goes a rich golden brown, and then add all the other spices into the saucepan. Stir it all for a while, then put the chicken in on a slow heat.

Keep stirring until the chicken is half-cooked, then add a little bit of water and then cook the chicken thoroughly. Add salt according to desire. On top of that, add vegetables to the plain curry if you so wish.