Cooking with Curry:Texas Media on Indian Cooking

[Guest guest]

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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