The Philosophy of Curry (British Library Philosophy of series) - Hardcover

Sukhadwala, Sejal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0712354506 ISBN 13: 9780712354509

Publisher: British Library Publishing, 2022

Synopsis

There are curries on almost every continent, with a stunning diversity of flavors and textures across India alone, and many more interpretations the world over, including in Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Trinidad and the UK. But curry is difficult to define. The word has origins in ancient India, but its adoption by Portuguese and British colonizers saw curry reinterpreted in the west to encompass an entire cuisine, prompting many Indians to reject the term outright.

Sejal Sukhadwala probes the complex intersection of tradition and colonialism through the fascinating history of curry, from its association with Ayurveda – one of the world's oldest holistic healing systems to its enduring popularity in contemporary British culture. Garnishing this history is a surfeit of helpful advice on which oils to use, how to temper spices and where to find those all-important mouth-watering recipes.

About this title

About the Author

Sejal Sukhadwala is a food writer who lives in London. She is frequently asked to write about Indian food and restaurants; over 20 years, she has written for a wide range of publications in the UK, US and India including the Guardian, The Times and BBC Food.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction
Curry is strongly associated with Indian food – so much
so that as an Indian I can barely talk to a stranger without
being asked about curry ingredients and recipes. However,
Indian curries don’t even appear to be that popular any
more. In a 2021 poll curry doesn’t feature in the nation’s
top fifty-seven dishes, although in another questionnaire
from the same year, Indian was the second most-loved takeaway
after Chinese, above fish and chips. In a worldwide
survey of twenty-four countries in 2019, Indian was only the
fourth cuisine of choice in Britain after British, Italian and
Chinese. And chicken tikka masala is no longer Britain’s
top curry – a 2016 vote put chicken korma at number one.1
Moreover, in a CNN Travel survey of the World’s Fifty
Best Foods updated in 2021,2 there are three curries to be
found, but none are Indian: South Africa’s bunny chow,
Indonesian rendang and Thai massaman, which came in at
number one. I know these ballots can be arbitrary and only a
tiny population of the world votes in them, but they can also
be a useful barometer of changing tastes. The Indian dishes
on the CNN list are in fact masala dosa and garlic butter crab,
which would surely please the ‘curry deniers’ no end.
Curry deniers are Indians, often from the diaspora, who
hate the term ‘curry’. During the writing of this book a controversy
erupted when an American-Indian ‘influencer’
urged people to ‘cancel the word because of its association
with colonialism’. It was a clumsily worded statement, but
it reflects a growing resentment of the use of the word. ‘But
there’s no such thing as curry!’ was a common response
when some Indian acquaintances heard I was writing this
book. One even helpfully suggested I drop the word ‘curry’
from the title and write a book on philosophy instead.
Perhaps it was Madhur Jaffrey who fired the first shot by
writing in 1973’s An Invitation to Indian Cooking:
To me the word ‘curry’ is as degrading to India’s great cuisine
as the term ‘chop suey’ was to China’s … ‘Curry’ is
just a vague, inaccurate word which the world has picked
up from the British, who, in turn, got it mistakenly from
us… If ‘curry’ is an oversimplified name for an ancient
cuisine, then ‘curry powder’ attempts to oversimplify (and
destroy) the cuisine itself.
Jaffrey later changed her mind because she went on to write
the Ultimate Curry Bible, and other cookbooks with the
word ‘curry’ in their title.
The argument is that the word dumbs down a hugely
complex and varied cuisine into one catch-all term thatdoesn’t reflect regional diversity. There’s so much more
to Indian food than curries: dumplings, pancakes, stirfries,
noodles, fritters, savoury porridges and an enormous
variety of snacks and street foods. Additionally curry is
only one of many genres of dishes in a thali, comprising
flatbreads, rice, dal or another legume, meat or another protein,
vegetables, pickles and relishes.
In ancient India rice was the main dish: it was piled up
high on a plate, and the savoury accompaniments – no
distinction was made between sauced dishes and pickles
– were only eaten in tiny quantities like relishes. Then
Europeans came along, turning the rice:relish ratio the
other way around and, it seems, randomly singling out
one category of dishes for special attention. They could
have chosen dal, a staple in every Indian household, or rice
– which was cooked in increasingly clever, complex and
competitive ways in Mughlai kitchens – but instead they
shone a light on curry. One reason they did so is because
they were used to eating meat cooked in a different way –
roasted, boiled or baked – and they found the method of
cooking small pieces of meat on a stove top fascinating.
Many Indians are also keen to distance themselves
from what they regard as ‘downmarket Bangladeshi curry
houses’, which they associate with greasy curries and use of
food colouring, with some expressing anger about restaurants
misrepresenting ‘real Indian home cooking’.
But it is curry’s association with colonialism that is the
biggest problem. One curry denier asked me recently: ‘Why
should I call a dish curry just because a British coloniser
called Mr Curry loved Indian food so much that someone
decided to name it after him?’ Although curry does
have an association with colonialism, this speculation is
incorrect.
For others it brings back painful memories of being told
by other schoolchildren in the playground that they smell
of curry – the kind of racism that persists even today for
adults living in apartment blocks in some European cities,
who’ve been told not to cook curry in case the smell offends
their neighbours.
But here’s the thing. For every Indian who says they
didn’t grow up using the word curry or buying curry powder
there are many others who did. Each Indian person’s
experience is limited to that within their own family, so generalisations
about the widely varying food habits of other
communities are pointless.
In India curries are often called ‘gravy’ or ‘masala’, and
may be referred to as ‘restaurant-style’ or ‘hotel-style’. The
word has South Indian origins, as we’ll see in the next chapter,
but the most common type of restaurant food in India
is Punjabi or Mughlai (South Indian restaurants have a different
history based on temple food and the mass feeding
of pilgrims).
So in India curry frequently refers to North Indian
dishes, often cooked in a tomato and onion-based gravy.
Regional curries are known by specific names like sabzi,shaak,
salna, salan, palya, poriyal, fry, jhol, rassa, kuzhambu,
saagu, erissery, gassi, pulusu and so on. These are all varieties
of curries named after ingredient, consistency, texture
or technique.

Edition details

• Publisher: British Library Publishing
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0712354506
• ISBN 13: 9780712354509
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 112