Curry and the British

I'm going to scream this from the mountain top, there's no such thing as 'a curry.' There's six kazillion different kinds of curry. When someone asks how to make chicken curry, I have to ask 'Which one?' Aarti Sequeira

And yet the author of this quote still uses the term 'curry' when in reality all of those kazillion dishes have individual names that do not include the word 'curry'. The word 'curry' apparently derives from a Tamil word 'kari' meaning sauce. It's a generic term that the British and their derivatives, used to initially describe Indian food, but which nowadays covers a whole lot of other cuisines from Asia as well - well also places as remote from India as the West Indies, Africa and the South Pacific. Basically it means a spicy dish with a sauce - not necessarily hot, but definitely spicy. After all the Indians, like the Italians and tomatoes, did not have chilli before the discovery of the new world. It was brought to Asia by the Portuguese in the 16th century. Hard to imagine Indian food without chilli isn't it? So Indian food too has changed over the centuries. And yet there is a substantial amount of Indian food that does not use chilli. Spices though have been used for thousands of years - the Romans used them a lot.

But back to the British. The British love curry (yes I'm going to use the word because, although it might be incorrect, and colonial, it is a word that the English speaking nations understand to mean a certain kind of dish). Since the 16th and 17th centuries the British have been trading spices. The East India Company made fortunes, and an empire from them. But it was not just a one-way thing. The British fell in love with the food of India and took it back home. The earliest recipe for curry (in England) is in Hannah Glasse's cookery book - dated 1747. And many London coffee houses served curry like dishes. And of course, when they did, they changed them to suit British tastes. Dishes like kedgeree and piccalilli, are essentially British, and the use of curry powder is very definitely British. In India, so they say, there is no such thing as curry powder. Which is not strictly true I suspect. I bet in an Indian supermarket you can buy spice mixes ready made. And whilst it is true that there may well be a much larger range of them, I'm willing to bet that busy modern Indian housewives make use of pre-packaged curry powders, or spice mixes in much the same way as we do.

I found quite a few interesting articles on all of this on the net and learnt little things like the fact that Queen Victoria ate Indian food on a regular basis, and that the first Indian restaurant opened in London in 1809. It was not a complete success but still somebody obviously thought it was a good idea. Nowadays there is a complete proliferation of them of course, but in my childhood there were not that many. In London there was the grand Veeraswamy in Regent Street. Very colonial - it is still there, and indeed it has a Michelin star. It has been there for a very very long time.

Of course, after the war, and massive immigration from the Indian sub-continent there was a huge expansion of Indian restaurants. Apparently over 60% of these were set up by the Bangladeshis. Whatever the origin and whatever the reason they are now a part of the national cuisine really. It is said, that Chicken butter cream, chicken tikka masala and all the balti dishes, for example, are essentially British inventions. Balti was introduced in Birmingham as a lighter way to eat Indian food. Chicken tikka masala is from Glasgow? I am told that Brick Lane in London is virtually wall to wall Indian restaurants. There is a National Curry Week and British Curry Awards and an absolute plethora of books and cooking shows. Jamie Oliver, in his fairly massive tome, Jamie's Great Britain has several recipes with an Indian influence. In it he claims that most British, if asked what their favourite meals were, would cite "mum's roast chicken and a curry." Which may well be true.

There are several good things to come out of all of this. Indian restaurants serve yummy food - we go often ourselves. Even the children seem to like it. Apparently my grandson's favourite restaurant is an Indian one. There is a plethora of sauces, flavour bases and spice mixes, not to mention the individual spices and herbs available on supermarket shelves. Indian breads too and complete frozen dishes as well. And there are also a large number of cooking shows and cooking books that celebrate Indian food. Cooks such as Madhur Jaffrey and Charmaine Solomon have shown us how to make 'authentic' Indian food and other cooks such as Jamie Oliver embrace the possibilities that Indian flavours offer to enhance more traditional foods.

And another thing, and I may be wrong here. When I was young, Indian food often included sultanas - which I have to say I did not like. Was that a British thing or do the Indians use sultanas in their food? Maybe the Moghul kind of dish - biriani or some of those things. It was served on P&O ships, (where my father worked) where the cooks were often from Goa.

This post came from my decision to make Chicken Saag for dinner tonight. Chicken with spinach - I must use up the last of that spinach, and I can boost it with the silver beet that is going to seed in my garden. Recipes seem to vary a lot - some are really runny, some are not, some have the spinach virtually puréed, some do not. I don't think Chicken Saag has been much bowdlerised by the British, so it's not really of a piece with the article, but I know I shall be describing it as a curry, and this got me to thinking about the British and their love of curry. I shall be going to Madhur Jaffrey for inspiration. I hope it turns out to look (and taste) as good as one of the two versions shown above and below.