Some facts to
know before reading further:
- I have only had Indian food twice before. The first time I tried it was at a fundraiser for my high school band. It was hosted by our drummer’s parents who I believe were from India in the high school cafeteria. I remember thinking the rice was very yellow for rice, but enjoyed the different flavor from the Rice a Roni that my family usually ate. The second time I tried it was at a dinner for a foreign exchange student from India who was staying with my supervisor over the summer. We went to a restaurant that he chose and I can’t remember what I ordered. I do remember that it was in a cream sauce that I couldn’t eat because I was allergic to milk.
- I’m from New Mexico and “spicy” does not mean the same thing to me as it does to people not from New Mexico.
- That being said, I think Curry is a county and not anything having to do with food
Now that you
know the facts about my experience with Indian food and my experience with
spicy food, maybe you will understand why I didn’t think twice about dumping
all of the curry spice from our latest Blue Apron recipe into the skillet. I did ask the husband what he thought and he
looked at me like I was crazy for asking, so I shrugged and dumped the spice
packet in. Oops.
The husband and
I sat down to eat and admired our work and even managed to take a picture
before diving in. I took one little
taste of the rice and sauce and knew that we were in trouble. The husband started mixing the sauce and
vegetables into the rice in his bowl and I tried not to shout “Noooooooo!!!!”
Instead, I managed to suggest that he taste it before mixing it up. I was hoping that the rice could balance the
spice if not mixed together. But I think
I was too late in offering the suggestion and the damage had been done.
Thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary,
I now know that curry is “a preparation of meat, fish, fruit, or
vegetables, cooked with a quantity of bruised spices and turmeric, and used as
a relish or flavouring, esp. for dishes composed of or served
with rice. Hence, a curry = a dish or stew (of rice, meat,
etc.) flavoured with this preparation (or with curry-powder).” I actually already knew about the turmeric,
what I didn’t know was that “bruised spices” could also include “fresh or dried hot chillies.”
This information comes from Wikipedia and as you can see “chillies” is not
spelled correctly (at least it isn’t spelled correctly in New Mexico,) so keep
that in mind when judging the accuracy of the statement.
The first use of
the word curry or carriil was in 1598 by W. Phillip J.H. Linshoten in Disc. Voy, E. & W. Indies, “Most of their fish is eaten with
rice, which they seeth in broth which they put upon the rice, and is somewhat
sowre..but it tasteth well, and is called Carriil.”
This implies that the dish was sour and not spicy. Was chile added to cover up the sour
taste?
Lizzie
Collingham states in her book Curry: A
Tale of Cooks and Conquerors that spices were not added to dishes to hide
the rancid (what I was calling sour) flavor of meat, but rather to enhance the
flavor of the dish. Before 1500 India
relied on pepper to spice their food. In
the later 1400’s, the price of pepper went up and in 1492 Columbus sailed the
ocean blue not to discover a new land, but to find an inexpensive route around
China to India to purchase spices for Spain. As we all know, he did not reach
India, but instead reached the Bahamas, Cuba, and later South America. He also found the Native American’s “aji” or
chile which he mistook for India’s pepper.
He took this pepper plant back to Spain and it somehow came into the
hands of the Portuguese who eventually did sail to India and sold the spice to
the people of India. Contrary to
popular belief this chili pepper is not native to India; however, it quickly
became a staple in Indian cooking.
The chile that
came from the Aztecs in Mexico that made its way into New Mexican cuisine is
the same chili pepper that made its way into Indian cuisine. While the green chile and the red chile are staples
in New Mexico and are roasted and made into sauces for dishes like enchiladas,
the chili peppers are dried and crushed into a powder and added to curry
dishes. New Mexico has a slogan of “Red or
green?” to question a person’s chile preference. Is there such a thing in India to refer to
how one prefers curry? Wet or dry? In a
sauce or more like a rub?
The Blue
Apron curry powder that we tried must have had dried red chile in it because it
And the moral
of the story is…..? Sometimes facts aren’t
really facts at all; they are opinions or maybe experiences that have developed
our opinions that we take as facts. They
cloud our judgement so that we can’t see what is in front of us – like the
directions on a recipe card that explicitly say to add as much spice as you
like – a clear warning that this could be spicy.
Some new
facts to know:
- Food cannot be judged by only two mere experiences
- “Spicy” just might mean the same thing to me as a New Mexican as it does to people not from New Mexico
- Curry is still a county in New Mexico, but it is also an intricate, complex sauce that originated in India that became spicier with other influences.
I would like
to test curry again in a controlled environment where I only add a little bit
of curry powder to the sauce and where I have ready access to a glass of milk
and lots and lots of pita bread.
References
Collingham,
Lizzie (2006). Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
"curry,
n.2." OED Online. Oxford
University Press, September 2016. Web. 11 September 2016.
Wikipedia contributors. "Curry." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Sep. 2016.
Web. 11 Sep. 2016.
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