Curry is a complex a subject as the senses it evokes. Popularly believed to have originated from Southern India, curry today abound every corner of Asia and beyond. However, many of these dishes apart from the same surname holds but a distant resemblance to each other. After been married to local tastes and having adapted local ingredients, spices and condiments, it has become the culinary heritage of the locality than an immigrant from another.

As the Director of Catering of Trans Asia Hotel, Augustus de Hoedt is quite the authority in curry. He [with Felicia Soronsan] brings to Colombo gastronomic pleasures from lands famed for its curry such as India, Thailand and Sri Lanka. With his expertise, bojoon.com dissects the subject of curry and the result is a fantastic spectrum of curry from round the world, with special landmarks in the culinary history.

Few are as truly Asian as curry. Yet, interestingly the British have played a heavy hand in its definition and its spread across the continents. Long before the British ventured into the Asian waters, the word ‘curry’ already existed in the English vocabulary referring to stews. There is thus this huge possibility that the British might have simply called ‘curry’ to dishes that reminded them of the stews back home. Then again, the word ‘kari’ in the Tamil vocabulary also refers to sauces made from vegetables or meats to accompany usually rice or rice-based dishes. Therefore, whether ‘curry’ is a corruption of ‘kari’ or whether ‘curry’ gained acceptance because of ‘kari’ remains a culinary mystery.

Yet, Indian cuisines existed for thousands of years and certainly long before the British sailed to Asia. Though almost intoxicating in flavor and aroma, Indian curries were a close partner of the ancient auyrvedha and thus a careful preparation to align with the harmony of the body. This ancient form of medicine neatly categorized Indian food into ‘heaty’ and ‘cooling’ and the typical menu are a just balance between the two.

To the plundering British, these Indian curries were so exotic and splendid that they wanted to replicate it back home in England. In typical British pragmatism, curry powders and curry pastes were formulated in a vain attempt to conquer the culinary expertise of the Indian cook. Yet, for so long, curry powders and pastes of the British were little more than ground turmeric and chili powder with perhaps some oil. Hence for many in the Western hemisphere, curry was a misconstruction of anything ‘spiced up’ with a curry powder or paste and sprinkled with sultanas, although how sultanas got into curry is another culinary mystery.

Join us as we explore the roots of our curries! Share your own thoughts and knowledge. Just drop an email to info@bojoon.com and we’ll publish it on this column. For more information, do visit www.bojoon.com.

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