Food: The Curry - As British As A Cup Of Tea

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The Curry - As British As A Cup Of Tea
Thursday, October 05, 2006

By Simon Woodhouse

Tracing the origin of a particular dish can be a tricky business. Food is a very organic thing, and in more than just a literal sense. Recipes evolve over time, they develop regional variations, they're tweaked and tuned, fiddled with, mutated, and sometimes just plain cooked wrong. Every time this happens, and it results in an edible end product, it muddies the water a little more and makes discovering a dish's origin that much more difficult.

In the case of curry, most people think it comes from India. But in fact the word itself is almost never used on the sub-continent. Even though there's no doubting what most of us would call a curry has some sort of origin in the East, the word may have in fact started life in England, and merely been applied to the new dish when it arrived in the mid 18th century. On the other hand, it's also said that curry comes from the Tamil word kari, as used in Southern India when the first British merchants arrived there in the 17th century. More oddities of this type exist within the world of curry. For instance, the dish Chicken Tikka Massala has no equivalent in India, is a product of English curry making, and is only now starting to gain a following in the land where most of us think it came from in the first place.

Though the origin of the word curry may be shrouded in mystery, the dish's march onto the palettes of the British population started in earnest toward the end of the 18th century, when at least one London coffee house had it on the menu. However, it wasn't until nearly a hundred years later, in the 1970s, when the number of Indian restaurants in Britain started to rise dramatically. What's interesting about this is the fact most of the 'Indian' restaurants weren't owned and operated by Indians at all. Pakistani migrants ran most of the outlets, or more specifically Pakistanis from Eastern Pakistan, the region that became Bangladesh in 1971. So Indian restaurants should have been called Bangladeshi restaurants.

One of the reasons for the curry's popularity in Britain probably comes from the way it's eaten. It's a very social affair, with all the different dishes placed in the middle of the table, from where everyone helps themselves to a bit of whatever it is they fancy. This makes a nice change from how food is served, ready plated, in more traditional restaurants. Curry houses also have quite late opening hours, making them the favorite haunt of the well-oiled drinker, who along with his mates wants something to soak up the booze. Despite this laddish image, going out for a curry is a classless form of recreation, and one where patrons are more interested in the quality of the food than the decor of the room they're eating it in.

Though there is little food snobbery associated with curry eating, there is a system by which your peers can grade your curry eating ability. Curry is a spicy food, and some men see it as a mark of their virility if they can down the real lead-melting dishes. At the bottom end of this scale is the Korma, a very mild, almost non-curry, that's flavored with almonds and coconut. If you're out for a night with the lads, eating a Korma is sure to attract derision. A bit further up the scale is the Bhuna, a medium strength curry with a thick sauce and some vegetables. Serious curry eaters however, won't consider anything below a Madras. This is a red curry, heavily loaded with chili powder, and a dish that will definitely bring tears to the eyes of the uninitiated. Jump over the Pathia and the Jalfrezi, and you arrive at the Vindaloo. Now you're in serious curry country. I can remember, when in my naivety, I ordered my first Vindaloo. When the waiter brought it to the table he also set down a dish of ice cubes. I thought 'ha-ha, this is obviously some sort of Indian waiter joke.' It was only after I'd swallowed a mouthful of Vindaloo I realized the ice cubes were there for a reason. In the end I think I ate far more ice than I did curry, and left the restaurant with no sensation in my lips, mouth or tongue. Vindaloo equals kudos, but if you want to really impress curry aficionados, order a Phaal. A Phaal is a type of curry that needs to be served in a bowl made of the same heat-resistant stuff as the tiles on the Space Shuttle. If you've seen the film Alien, and know the bit where the snot-dribbling monster's blood melts through the deck of the ship, then you'll know what a Phaal will do to your stomach. What I'm saying is, it's hot, surface of the sun hot - order one at your peril.

Though some curries should come with a health warning, that hasn't stopped the dish becoming the most popular food in Britain. In a recent Gallop opinion poll, curry was named as the nation's favorite thing to eat, something that's as well loved in the UK as hamburgers in America, and Sushi in Japan. So if you're after traditional British cuisine, forget roast beef or steak and kidney pie, it's a curry you want.

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