Curry
Note: This article is about the dish. For the curry tree and its leaves, see the foot of this page. You might also be interested in the logician Haskell Curry and the procedure of currying named for him.A curry is any of a great variety of distinctively spiced dishes, best-known in Indian and Thai cuisine, but found in many other countries.
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2 Ingredients 3 External link |
The term curry is originally a Tamil word referring to various kinds of dishes common in South India made with vegetables or meat and usually eaten with rice. The term is used more broadly, especially in the Western Hemisphere, to refer to almost any spiced, sauce-based dishes cooked in various south and southeast Asian styles, or to anything that one might eat in an Indian restaurant or curry house. This imprecise umbrella term is largely an artifact of the British raj. Well-known Indian dishes include Korma, Madras, Vindaloo, Butter Chicken and Rogan Josh. Curry used in this sense is often accompanied by breads like naan, roti or popadums.
In Tamil cuisine, from which the word originated, curry refers to any dry preparation involving meat or vegetables shallow-fried with dry spices. Used as a word in itself, it usually means chicken curry or mutton curry; the dishes made with vegetables are usually referred to with the vegetable as prefix - e.g. Potato curry, Beans curry. Curry is usually eaten with Rice and Sambar or Rasam.
In other varieties of Indian cuisine, curry is a sauce - sometimes considered a soup - made by stirring yoghurt into a roux of ghee (clarified butter) and besan (chick pea flour). The spices added vary, but usually include turmeric and black mustard seed.
In British cuisine, the word curry denotes a dish flavored with curry powder, usually roasted until it turns fairly dark. This is especially true for non-vegetarian dishes. There is Lamb Curry, Chicken Curry, Beef Curry and so on.
British Indian restaurants have developed the Curry to such a level that it has become an integral part of British Cuisine. Some Indian food is actually exported from the United Kingdom to India. (There was an instance of an Englishman asking for a local curry to be sent to Australia).
British curries are generally arranged by strengths that roughly follow the order below in terms of strength (going from mild to very hot indeed):
Curries around the world
Britain is in fact the home of two widely familiar "Indian" dishes, Chicken Tikka Massala and Balti (which is a curry designed to be eaten with a large naan bread).
In the late 1990s, chicken tikka masala was commonly referred to as the "British national dish", being apparently the single commonest dish in the country, available (albeit in frozen, microwavable form) on intercity rail trains, and even used as a pizza topping.
Curries are not confined to India and the United Kingdom, British style curry restaurants are common and increasingly popular in Australia and New Zealand. Other countries have their own varieties of curry, well known examples include:
- Thailand: green, red and yellow curries
- Malaysia & Indonesia: rendangs
- South Africa: Cape malay curries
- Sri Lanka: Rice and curry meals
Ingredients
Thickeners
Spices
Sour ingredients
Fresh Herbs and Spices
External link
Curry powder aka Masala Powder is a spice mixture of widely varying composition developed by the British during their colonial rule of India as a means of approximating the taste of Indian cuisine at home. Masala refers to spices, and this is the name given to the thick pasty liquid sauce of combined spices and ghee (clarified butter), butter, palm oil or coconut milk.
Curry leaves are the young leaves of the curry tree (Chalcas koenigii), a member of the Rutaceae family that grows wild and in gardens all over India. They must be used fresh, as they lose their delicate flavor when dried.