People ask me all the time: "Can you make a good curry?" I tell them that question is like asking "Can you cook almost every Pakistani meal?"
The truth is that non-desis use the word curry to mean an kind of spicy meat or veggie dish - usually if it has a bit of a gravy to it. But there are lots and LOTS of desi dishes that are a spicy meat or vegetable dishes cooked with some kind of gravy. In fact, probably most of them are like that. And they're all pretty different from each other.
For example, I cook a dish that has potatoes and hard-boiled eggs in a slightly spicy tomato and onion puree (Unda-Aloo Salan - basically Egg-Potato Gravy). And I also cook a lentil dish that's lentils and spices cooked to make a soupy consistency (Daal). And there's also a beef dish that has tomatoes and is considered a fancier and is served at social functions like weddings. (Qorma) Believe me, all of these dishes are very different from each other, though they'd all probably qualify under the misconceived understanding of "curry."
That's not even considering similar dishes make with fish and coconut milk that are typical South Indian dishes that are considered VERY different from the "curries" listed above.
There's another meaning of curry, of course. The curry leaf is a leaf from a plant that's used in some Indian cooking. And curry powder is frequently used in Indian(ish) cooking also. Usually I see curry powdered called for in Americanized versions of Indian food, like curried chicken salad of curried deviled eggs. The reason is that "curry powder" is really just a mixture of common desi spices, and it's the same as the "curry" use above. Desi cooking uses a lot of different mixtures of spices depending on the dish! Curry powder basically means little or nothing to the desi cook because they're usually using the actual, individual spices depending on the dish.
I actually wanted to make curried chicken salad for the first time this weekend, and the recipe called for curry powder. I don't have curry powder on hand, so I didn't know what to do. I looked up "curry powder substitutions" online and found many different recipes for making your own curry powder. Usually it called for a LONG list of spices, including weird ones like Anise and Mace and Allspice. (As opposed to some of the more "common" spices like coriander powder, turmeric, and red chili powder.) The funny thing was that I had every single spice on those lists in my cupboard, but I didn't have the "curry powder." I was able to whip up my very own blend of curry powder in no time.
And the chicken salad turned out fantastic, if I do say so myself!
8 comments:
Yep I often find myself writing "curry" in quotation marks. Curry has spread around the world tho and there are Vietnamese brands of curry powder for ca ri ga and Japanese curry powders and so forth that are used in staple dishes. I am not sure what Thais and Malays/Indonesians call their curries, but I always see their dishes represented a "curry" on menus. And guess what, the curry powder born during the British Raj has made its way back because many Indian and Pakistani spice mix brands, including Shan, have curry powders. I use the Shan one frequently.
There is no agreement as to the origin of the word as it is used in English, as in Indian languages wet liquidy gravy dishes are called a variety of things (like saalan by Urdu speakers), but not curry. So it could be the curry leaf. It could also be the dish karhi, which is made differently in different regions, but you probably know the gram flour/yoghurt one with pakoras (karhi pakore). I have also read somewhere that "curry" comes from a similar sounding South Indian word which means wet gravy. So who knows?
I guess it tastes good, and that is what counts.
Curry reminds me of this documentary I saw '50 things you must eat before you die' hosted by Ainsley Harriott of BBC food. Curry was among the top 10 :-)
there are probably regional varities of curry. For example what we call curry is made out of tons of yoghurt and with some pakora powder mixed in. Then it is tumbled and mixed for an hour.
http://jjutol.blogspot.com/
I believe Anday-Aaloo ka salan is a pretty easy dish :D
And to my knowledge qorma doesn't have tomatoes, "Karahi" does :D And "Chicken Karahi" is one of the best things one can eat :D
Mmm you seem like a good cook m'A!
Here is a nice Wikipedian article on curry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry
''Curry is the English description of any of a general variety of spiced dishes, best known in Asian cuisines, especially South Asian cuisine. Curry is a generic term, and although there is no one specific attribute that marks a dish as "curry", some distinctive spices used in many, though certainly not all, curry dishes include turmeric, red pepper and cumin. The word curry is generally believed to be an anglicized version of the Tamil word kari. It is usually understood to mean "gravy" or "sauce", rather than "spices".''
''In India the word "curry" is heavily used in the southern part of India in languages such as Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. It is derived from the word, "kari", which has its origins in Classical Tamil, and means "vegetable in sauce" or "sauce". In Kannada 'Kari' means to fry or the fried dish.''
''The Urdu (Pakistani) word for 'curry' is used to describe a kind of yellow vegetarian curry made with flour.''
^^ Our ''curry'' is not pronounced as curry though. Its ''kaR-hee'' ... with a retroflex R.
And then there is karahi (pronounced kaR-[h]ai) which is the Indo-Pak version of a wok.
Dishes cooked in the kaRhai are named as: [Meat name] + kaRhai.
I forgot to mention the Kadhi that LF wrote about - pakoras in an onion-yogurt sauce. It's on of my favorite dishes! Also, the karahi that Anonymous talked about is pronounced differently that "curry" - it's more like kuhr-eye, and it's named after the dish it's made in which is shaped like a wok but much heavier and castiron.
In response to Luckyfatima::
Malays call curry as 'Kari'; and yeah there are endless variations of it which I suppose has to do with the influence of Indian cookery. We also have 'dhal', 'qeema' and 'qorma'; whereby bottomless variations exist for these too. Mum used to make her own curry powders, recipes obtained from her Indian friends. These days, we settle with the premade ones. :)
I *love* curry chicken salad - try some grape halves in it next time, it's fabulous!
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