CURRY : A Culinary Journey
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by: ReshmiGuha
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Book Review
Curry: A tale of cooks and conquerors
Lizzie Collingham
In her new book, ‘Curry: A tale of cooks and conquerors’ Lizzie Collingham skillfully weaves a delectable history and evolution of curry, the exotic casserole. In turn the book also depicts the rise of different dishes resulting from the fusion of different cultures and food practices.
It is quite fascinating to travel with Ms.Collingham as she takes us on a culinary tour: for example that of pilau, the pièce de résistance of Persian cuisine and its final reincarnation as its more famous ancestor: the Biryani. From Persia, pilau spread throughout the Muslim World. In Turkey it was called pilav; in Spain with the addition of seafood and an emphasis on saffron it became paella: in Italy butter transformed it into risotto.
In India this very pilau underwent further transformation in the kitchens of Great Mughals. It is over here that the apparently mismatched culinary cultures came together to produce a remarkable synthesis of the recipes and foods of Northern Hindustan, Central Asia and Persia. The delicately flavored Persian pilau met the pungent and spicy rice dishes of Hindustan to create the classic Mughlai dish, the biryani.
The recipes with their distinct flavors, preferences and the food culture had grown so intertwined with the essence of being Indian that often what we take for granted as quintessential food practices and dishes existing from time immortal, on a closer look as pointed out by Ms. Collingham turn out to foreign imports. That includes from chillies to tea to the omnipresent potatoes.
It is interesting to know that no Indian had ever seen, let alone cooked with a chilli before the Portuguese arrived in India at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Also considering the fact that India is now both the world’s major producer and consumer of tea, it seems incredible that before 1900’s this beverage wasn’t drank at all. Thus we had to wait for the British to introduce tea in India who barely changed the way Indians eat, but radically altered what they eat and drink.
From Arab traders to the Mughals, from Syrian Christians, Jewish settlers and Persian Shi’ites to Portuguese and the British; each had influenced the Indian cuisine in its own way and left an indelible impact.
However it's not always a linear travel of culinary preferences and assimilation that follows. As Ms.Collingham shows that Japan which possesses its very own sophisticated and distinct food culture shared no colonial connection with India, yet curry rice occupies a position of national importance in Japan. Every train station and shopping mall in Japan has a stand selling karee raisu (curry rice). In fact there are even comic books in which the best ways of cooking a curry are earnestly discussed by the main characters.
That also explains why it is not surprising to find delicious bunny chow (Indian food) and roti wraps on the street corners of Fiji and the Caribbean along with the khichari using rice and lentils flavored with chives, parsley and thyme.
To avoid monotony of scholarly discussions, the chapters are richly garnished with historical facts, anecdotes, illustrations and last but not the least mouth-watering recipes.
In spite of referring to numerous sources and exhaustive research, the book tells history of curry in a delightfully simple yet informative way. Written in a lucid style the book therefore is a must-read for not only the food historians but any connoisseurs of good food to understand the travel of food and the futility of adhering authenticity to any particular cuisine. The book aims to explore histories of many of the Indian dishes and trace their culinary roots, their discovery or invention by Europeans and the various ways they traveled back to Britain and around the rest of the world.
Like a globetrotter, Collingham trudges from the rugged terrains in Persia to understand the camping food of the nomadic shepherds to Leamington Spa in Britain to understand the developments of curry houses and appreciate the evolution of Indian food in each stage. The journey is pretty intriguing especially considering the fact that the then Foreign Minister Robin Cook declared Chicken Tikka Masala as the new national dish of Great Britain in 2001.
It can be rightly concluded as aptly depicted by Ms.Collingham that in modern India the kitchens of the growing Indian bourgeoisie have joined the imperial kitchens of the Mughal emperors, the bake houses of the Portuguese settlers at Goa, the Vaisnavite temple kitchens in the south and the cookhouses of the British in India as the engines of culinary change in turn giving rise to a epicurean efflorescence as dynamic and resilient as its own people.
It not only provides biography of korma, curry, vindaloo or biryani but sails smoothly across geography, time and periods of history; its maps the annals of history and tells a delightful story through pots and pans.
About the Author
"Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum" (Latin: "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am").
(René Descartes)
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