I watch a lot of British TV shows, and often the characters will say, “Let’s go out for A curry,” or “It’s a good night for A curry,” or “I could murder A curry,” (if it’s a crime show).
What makes A dish A curry? As I understand it, what is sold in the USA as “curry powder” isn’t what you would find in India. I think people make their own blends? Or maybe you *can *buy curry powder there. I don’t know. I never go anywhere.
There’s also this stuff called “Golden Curry” that you can find in the grocery store, and naturally, from amazon, too. Why is that considered curry?
Recently on Chris Kimball’s new show, Milk Street, he presented a recipe called “Cape Malay Chicken Curry.” You won’t be able to see the recipe unless you subscribe. but here are the ingredients. There’s no “curry powder.” What makes this curry or A Curry?
It’s just a spiced dish in the style of Indian food. Curry powder is just a blend of common spices. These are terms invented by the English, there’s no specific dish or style that is a curry, or mix of spices that make curry powder.
In your dish it is the seasonings in the style of the sub-continent that make it a curry.
ETA: There is also an herb called “curry”, and a type of tree with “curry” in it’s name. These are unrelated to the food style or powder, but I have seen the use of curry leaves in Indian style food.
It’s stewed meat and/or vegetables, served over rice, typically seasoned with onions, garlic, fresh ginger, and any of myriad herbs and spices including cumin, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, turmeric, cloves, red pepper, chiles. The gravy can be based on tomatoes, yogurt, etc.
The British learned about curry during their occupation of India and adapted it to their own tastes, inventing “curry powder” as a convenient mixture of the above spices in various quantities. Oddly, the Brits like it simple, but HOT. It’s become one of the most beloved take out (take away) fast dinners in England.
I’m not so sure about that. Curry leaves are rarely in curry powder (in fact, I’ve never seen them in curry powder. The base of bog-standard generic “curry powder” is usually a mix of turmeric, coriander, and/or cumin, but it can be any number of spices, and some of these may be omitted.) When curry leaves are used, they’re typically fried up in oil and added to the dish.) The first curry recipe in English, published by Hannah Glasse, only included pepper and coriander as the spices. A few years later, turmeric and ginger were added, and coriander dropped. Cite.
Or grilled/broiled, if you’re going for a tikka masala, though that’s actually a Scottish invention in the style of Bengali curry. Vindaloo, meanwhile, is of Portugese origin and was adapted with Goan spices.
‘Going out for a curry’ in the British TV context almost invariably means going to a Bangladeshi, Pakistani or Indian restaurant, because that’s who forms the largest population of cheap and cheerful eat-in and takeaway joints in Britain.
A curry is a meal from one of these places, but as a generic term it covers many different styles of cooking from this vast area of 1.5 billion people, and ‘having a curry’ doesn’t necessarily mean that what you order will be a curry in the strict sense.
If you are in Australia, then the curries are likely to be Thai, Vietnamese, Singaporean atc, which are different again.
I’m with Ike. There are all sorts of curries: Red curries, yellow curries, green curries (just like traffic lights), hot curries, cool curries, Indian curries, Thai curries and many others as have been noted.
You can play with spice mixtures as much or as little as you like, but certain items make regular appearances: Onion, ginger, garlic, ground coriander, turmeric, chopped fresh coriander (cilantro), mustard seed, cumin, cinnamon, garam masala. I’ve also got recipes that call for cardamom, cloves, fenugreek, lemon… lots of variations. Ironically, rarely curry leaves.
Coconut milk is often added to cool curries, but I’ve also had hot tomato-based curries made with coconut milk. Yogurt and cream, too. Spice mixtures are frequently ground coarsely and then toasted in the hot pan. But there are no hard and fast rules.
Oh, and “golden curry” is a brand of Japanese curry. Funny, I was just watching a short documentary about this. This documentary said that Japanese curry came to Japan via the Japanese navy adopting it form the Royal Navy. Actually, here’s an article about it.
Japanese curry is different in that it is basically roux-based, and a whole mess of stuff can go into it. Those ready-made mixes start out with a base of curry powder Japanese curry powder also starts with the base of turmeric, cumin, coriander (and S&B – one of the major brands – also has a hefty dose of fenugreek) plus a number of “fragrant” spices like cloves and/or cinnamon and/or cardamom, etc, but after that you have all sorts of stuff like soy sauce, cheese, apples, honey, etc.–some of those curry sauce mixes go pretty crazy with ingredients.
You then cook up a stew of your choice of protein with usually carrots, onions, and potato (at a minimum) in water, and then you add your curry sauce cubes, which has flour and/or corn starch as a thickener in it, as well and you get this sweet and spiced (and can be spicy, if you like) stew usually served with rice (or noodles.) Basically, those curry cubes are a roux mixed in with curry spices and some other things. If you were making Japanese curry from scratch, you’d essentially create a blonde roux with curry spices and other ingredients like apples and the like (as mentioned above), and add that to your stew to thicken and flavor. So, it’s called curry because it’s a stew that has curry powder as its base flavor.
Oh, yeah, Thai and Southeast Asian curries are another kettle of fish. A typical Thai curry will start with lemon grass, makrut (kaffir) lime leaves, galangal, cilantro, shallots, chiles, shrimp paste, etc., all beat up in mortar and pestle into a paste rather than dry ground spices as many British-Indian style curries are. Flavorwise, they don’t really have that much in common in my opinion (except for a few like Massaman which kind of taste like a cross between South Asian and Southeast Asian curry). To me, “curry” is just a generic terms for a very fragrant stew made originating in the flavors of South and Southeast Asia. It’s kind of difficult to put a fine-pointed definition on it.
Where I used to live, there was a tiny jewel of an authentic Thai curry house a couple blocks down toward the beach. Best used strictly for takeaway, and here’s why: When Noi stepped up onto her milk crate so she could reach her giant wok and work her curry magic, if someone had ordered “hot,” you couldn’t walk into the place. You’d immediately start choking and your eyes would water like a pair of leaky faucets.
But my god, it was fabulous!! Medium was as much heat as I could handle by her gauge, and I order extra hot most places. But I still dream of her Pad Prik King and Masaman curry!
I have several friends of Jamaican, Trinidadian, and Grenadian extraction (it’s Brooklyn) and their common favorite is chicken (or goat) and onion sautéed together, then covered in water, salted, and seasoned with copious amounts of West Indian curry powder, available here in ordinary supermarkets as well as ethnic groceries.
God knows what goes into the powder, the label is very mysterious, but it’s yellow. Potatoes and carrot are sometimes added to the pot, sometimes simple dumplings made of flour and water with no leavening. You cook the stew down until the gravy is thick and serve it alongside rice and peas (most often pigeon peas, but sometimes black eyed peas or kidney beans are substituted).
It’s spicy and has a kick, but isn’t flaming hot the way East Indian or Central American dishes can be. That’s the way the like it in the Caribbean.
I had a Trinidadian friend in high school, and an invitation to her house was highly prized because her parents made the best curry ever. They’d wrap it in a roti and you’d eat it like a burrito. Damn those were good.
The underlined part is especially helpful WRT to the language used. Around here, we wouldn’t say, “Let’s go out for curry,” we’d just say, “Let’s go get some Indian food,” the way we say, “Let’s go get some Mexican/Italian/Chinese food.”
Hey! It’s my thread, so I’m the one y’all have to curry favor with.
