Cross-Cultural Curry--Origins of Our Favorite Spicy Stew

The word 'curry' started out in Tamil in Southern India and Sri Lanka as 'kari

,' and simply meant 'sauce and relish to go with rice.' But such an obscure utterance, once upon the back of the mighty roving British Empire created a whole new global category of dishes where there was none before.

These days, any spicy stew or stew like dish that is at least modestly hot is apt to be called curry. Thus we have Haitian curry, African curry, Jamaican curry, Thai curry, Malaysian and Indonesian curry, to name just a few.

Geographically speaking, admittedly, many of these dishes share regional similarities, but the differences end there. Thai 'curries' are often based on coconut milk, but just as often they are not. Aside from chilies though, and not even preferably then, Thais don't dry their spices and like to put big chunks of aromatic and fibrous pieces of plant matter into their dishes. This custom is more or less found throughout Southeast Asia, with dramatic exceptions.

Indians, on the other hand, use a whole different array of spices than the Thais and these are almost always dried. In fact, in most Indian kitchens the spices are whole and ground fresh for each dish. Northern Indian 'curries' tend to be thickened by a roux made of minced onions softly saluted for over half an hour.

In other words, despite the common English label of 'curry,' an Indian would regard a Thai curry as a completely alien dish from his own. He may like it or may not, but it is definitively foreign fare.

People stew food the world over. Just because it is spiced and hot doesn't make it curry. Oddly enough, before I went to Thailand for the first time, I read that Thai food was "like Chinese food, but hot." So I was expecting Szechuan, but got something that was, well, weird, and not like Chinese food at all. And then I became hopeful when I heard all this talk about 'curry' because I knew I liked that.

Cross-Cultural Curry--Origins of Our Favorite Spicy Stew

By: Rand Whitehall

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