Cooking with Curry:Texas Media on Indian Cooking

06-01-2006, 08:16 PM

Cooking with Curry -- Conglomeration of spices carries international
flavor, character
May 31,2006
Paige Lauren Deiner
Monitor Staff Writer

For more than six thousand years spices have been a part of Indian
cooking, but it wasn't until British colonization in the 1700's that
the myriad of spices that are mixed into recipes acquired its
international name — curry.

"The term curry itself isn't really used in India, except as a term
appropriated by the British to generically categorize a large set of
different soup/stew preparations ubiquitous in India and nearly
always containing ginger, garlic, onion, turmeric, chile, and oil
(except in communities which eat neither onion or garlic, of course)
and which must have seemed all the same to the British, being all
yellow/red, oily, spicy/aromatic, and too pungent to taste anyway,"
according to The Curry House, a Web site which explains curry and
curry recipes.

Indians refer to curry as gravy, or parkari, rather than curry, said
Kavita Mehta, who runs the Indian Foods Company in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, and grew up in India.

But no matter what its name, creating dishes with the spices was
considered a sacred ceremony in ancient India. "On banquet days, the
princes and princesses of the great households helped in the kitchen —
obviously their help was needed since 10 to 20 curries were served
at these meals," wrote Florence Brobeck in her book Cooking with
Curry.

She said that curry gained international appeal after the British
colonization of India. The British ate Indian food, modified it and
then when they returned to England they brought the recipes back with
them. When British immigrated to the United States they brought the
recipes with them. Thus, they introduced the United States to
Mulligatawny Soup, among other recipes.

As more immigration in and out of India occurred more and more
cultures combined, giving a new twist on the traditional Indian
curries. Now those curries have been re-imported to the urban areas
of India.

Mehta said the dishes which are enjoying success in India and the
rest of the world for their spicy and exotic tastes are very
different from the curries she grew up with in Bombay.

"When I grew up it was very simple food — bread, rice, simple gravy,
lentil dishes with its own gravy, dry vegetables cooked with gravy,
yogurt and chutneys," she said.

The food served in Indian restaurants most often stems from the
dishes Indians make when entertaining, Mehta said. Many of those
dishes are very labor intensive and require many hands to chop, slice
and dice vegetables and pummel, grind, and crush the spices.

"It's a cooperative effort," Mehta said.

But cooking with curry is also a restorative and nutritionally sound
venture.

"We were very much into nutrition and what elements we could put in
our cooking," Mehta said. "Indian cooking is very complex when you
look at it in an academic way. There are lots of layers, depth. When
I grew up we had to go to the Ayer-Vedic physician and he would
recommend certain foods."

A mother would take her sick child to the physician and he would
recommend certain herbs or vegetables as a cure. Then the mother
would go home and incorporate the recommended ingredients into a
recipe.

Satnam Singh Saini, the owner of A Taste of India restaurant in
McAllen, said that many of the ingredients in curry have medicinal
purposes. He said that turmeric is good for upset stomachs. Garlic
and ginger lower blood pressure and provide pain relief. The heat in
curry also lowers cholesterol, besides making a person sweat out
toxins, said Singh Saini.

Singh Saini said it is important that all of the ingredients are
fresh. He said he owns six acres of land in India; when he lived
there he grew all of the vegetables that his family consumed on that
land. The family generally ate cauliflower, potatoes, spinach,
lentils, chicken or fish, which was cooked with a variety of spices
or curries.

In traditional Indian cooking, recipes are prepared were made with
local ingredients and changed little from generation to
generation. "When I grew up, you ate food that was appropriate to the
background you came from," Mehta said. "You stuck to those recipes."

Singh Saini said that in rural India there are few restaurants that
serve anything except the local cuisine, and it was rare for people
to go out to eat. Generally, the family prepares all of the meals,
even for celebrations like weddings.

At every meal — be it a celebration or not — some sort of curry is
served.
———
Paige Lauren Deiner covers features and entertainment for The
Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4425.
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