My true love - curry
Taste Like Home
Cynthia Nelson
Stabroek News
February 10, 2007
Hi Everyone,
Valentine's Day is fast approaching and we all know that romance is often spelled f-o-o-d: from the heart-shaped box of chocolates to the candlelight dinner for two in a fancy restaurant. But what about love and food, can we spare a few minutes to think about the foods we love? What is your favorite dish?
No matter how fancy the food I eat, no matter how sophisticated my palate becomes, curry will always be my first love. You see, curry is many things at one time - something no other dish I know can claim to be. It is simple yet exotic, easy to prepare yet difficult to master; curry is spicy, flavourful, hot, mild and versatile to many ingredients. Vegetables, poultry, meat, fish, shrimp; other seafood such as crab and lobster, eggs, fruit and ground provision can all be curried. Every time I look at an ingredient, especially if it's new to me, the first thing that comes to mind is, can I curry this? I wonder how this would taste curried?
Admitting to myself, and now publicly, that curry is my favourite dish was no easy feat. Cook-up rice, Chinese food and dhal were serious contenders, like curry, they are foods that I can eat everyday and never get bored or tired of consuming. Nevertheless, curry was the clear winner once I started to list the things that can be curried, the variety was staggering. Nostalgia played a part too - the first dish I ever cooked was curry, curried pork.
When did my love affair with curry begin? I do not know. Like love, I think that it is one of those things that just happens, it creeps up on you, catches you unaware. You're confronted by certain situations and then it dawns on you - how much you miss it, how you long for it, how you crave the taste, hunt for the ingredients, and engage people in conversations about it. You have this intense feeling about it that cannot be satisfied until you consume it. That's the kind of hold that curry has over me, it's my love food.
Growing up my mom would ask us what we'd like to eat and my answer was always curry, until one day she said, "Girl, you ain't tired eating curry? Everyday you want curry? Well I'm tired of eating curry and I'm not cooking any for two weeks", such cruelty.
When I arrived in Barbados, of all the foods of home, I missed curry the most. When my mom called to find out if I needed anything, I told her, "Send me some curry powder and garam masala."
My neighbours who live opposite my home are Indian nationals, when they make curry the aroma would stop me in my tracks as I make my way from the car to the house. I'd stand there sniffing the air trying to figure out if it is a meat or seafood curry. It is hard to describe but I can usually tell the difference just by smelling. When it is seafood, there is a lightness of the curry aroma, if it is vegetables - the natural scent of the vegetable is evident amidst the spicy mix. Curried meat and poultry tend to have a more robust, full-bodied aroma.
While I love all curry, my favourite type is seafood curry, specifically fish curry. Catfish, gilbaka and hassar are my favourites. I like my fish curry cooked with hot pepper, and some green mango, saijan or okras. Serve it with a plate of hot white rice and a little achar and I am in curry heaven. I am not big on the meaty part of the fish; give me the head where I can suck the bones! Don't even bother with cutlery, fingers it is! It is the only tool to do the job properly.
I love curry so much that I've often let my desire lead me astray, disappoint me. I've had restaurant servers recommend and encourage me to have the curry on their menus only to leave vowing to cook curry the very next day so that I can block out the awful taste of their curry. I've deliberately gone to establishments touting curry as their prized offering only to be let down.
Over the years, I've come to learn that there is curry and then there is curry. In other words, there is the curry that we eat here in the Caribbean and then there are the curries of India: North India, South India of which we are influenced. Our Caribbean curry is a combination of both regions. The North Indian cuisine is considered to be mild while the South, spicier - we prepare both. The South Indian cuisine influenced our use of coconut milk in curries, an ingredient rarely seen in the North. Southerners like rice, the Northerners, wheat and we know how we love rice and roti here in the Caribbean.
In the book Curry: Fragrant dishes from India, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, Executive Chef Vivek Singh best defines curry. "Essentially, any fish, meat or vegetables cooked in and with spices and liquid is a curry. The spices and liquid form a sauce that becomes a part of the dish. It is the spices or spice combinations that make each curry different."
Before my trip home last Christmas, my mom asked me what she should cook for me on the day of my arrival. I said, "Mommy, yuh asking answers?! I want curry!"
Cynthia