Beauty <i> Salan</i>

Mirch ka salan is my kind of vegetable . . . what we’re talking about is essentially a stew of jalapeno peppers, dozens of them where you might expect to see okra or spinach floating among the spices, and the result is hot enough to sear your esophagus into steak-o-bob. It’s one of the specialties of the Pakistani-Muslim restaurant Shahnawaz, where the house beverage seems to be ice water served by the pitcherful, and you can see why. Mirch ka salan is less a dish than a force of nature, a thick stew the approximate yellowy tan of a camel’s flank, heady with the scents of garlic and ginger, bound with a pungent, grainy mortar of ground spice. Garnishes of lemon, cucumber and fresh shredded ginger are served alongside in a gleaming metal salver; in a straw basket are smoking-hot ovals of freshly baked naan bread with which to scoop up the stew.

I’ve been to Shahnawaz half a dozen times in the last month or so, and I’ve ordered mirch ka salan every time.

Shahnawaz is in a corner of Lakewood that has always seemed more like Lower Cerritos, next to an Indian jewelry shop, an Indian cookware store and a nicely stocked Indian grocery, a mile or so from the heart of Artesia’s Little India. Restaurants that conform to Muslim dietary law usually serve great food, but even among the Southland’s halal restaurants, Shahnawaz is extraordinary. Six people can eat to bursting for less than 30 bucks.

The place can seem forbidding at first, a small dining room filled with chain-smoking men, a Lakers game blaring from a corner TV, a loud, finger-pointing argument with occasional phrases like “fast break” and “slam dunk” like islets in the rapid stream of Urdu. Sometimes you may wait 15 minutes at a table before anybody realizes you are there, and you will probably have trouble getting anybody to explain the several untranslated items on the menu. Sometimes everybody in the restaurant will have their noses buried in the newest edition of

the local Pakistani press. Every so often, you will run across a waiter who finds it hard to believe that you really do want to try the spicy, delicious minced brains masala . (Trust me: You do.)

The chapter on Pakistani cookery in the Time-Life Foods of the World series is entitled, “Pakistan: Muslims Who Live on Meat,” and jalapeno stew or no jalapeno stew, it’s not as if Shahnawaz serves a lot of vegetables--a lentil dal , a blandish dish of spinach and potatoes, and something called baghare baigun that is essentially mirch ka salan with chunks of Asian eggplant in place of the chiles, may be about it.

Nehari is a spicy beef stew flavored sharply with ginger; haleem is a gentle mash of pounded meat cooked with grain, not unlike the Persian dish dizi ; paya is a rich, clove-scented stew of beef and ox tendon cooked to a melting tenderness. On weekends, there is a very nice biryani , basmati rice cooked with butter and sweet spices, and tossed with chunks of lamb.

And consider the tandoori mix plate: a rare lamb chop, subtly smoky, crisp at the edges; a few pieces of bright-red marinated chicken tikka that spurt juice like chicken Kiev; a ruddy, whole chicken leg; several inches worth of clove-scented minced-lamb kebab; a tart pile of yogurt-marinated roasted beef, all for about $6.95. Shahnawaz may be one of the best restaurants in town for food cooked in a tandoor , the intensely hot clay oven that at its infrequent best--but almost always here--crisps meat, seals in the juices and flavors it with a smoky tang.

Oh yeah--stuffed paratha . Don’t forget the stuffed paratha --hot chiles again. And check out the warm, sweet, nutted carrot halva.

* Shahnawaz Halal Tandoori Restaurant

12225 E. Centralia Ave., Lakewood, (310) 402-7443. Open Tuesday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Lot parking. Takeout and delivery. No alcohol. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $10 to $14.