"Do you fancy a curry for tea?" By Katie

There are over 9,000 curry houses across the UK and really, who doesn’t love a curry? A couple of my favourites include Jack Monroe’s chickpea and peach curry, a crunchy and sweetly strange combination that has quickly become one of my new favourite comfort foods, self-proclaimed curry-evangelist Nisha Katona’s Bengali prawn and pea curry, and anything made with a tub of Chinese curry paste. But all these dishes taste so different and look so different, so what actually makes something a ‘curry’?

The word curry is a catch-all term which has been adopted to refer to soup and stew dishes from India, South-East Asia and parts of Oceania. The fact that we categorise dishes from these diverse countries together explains why there is such a range of ‘curries’ on offer – really, these dishes are completely unrelated to each other. In fact, the term curry is derived from the Tamil word ‘kari’ which simply means ‘spiced sauce’. 

When it comes to the herbs and spices used in these ‘spiced sauces’, some are common to most curries. In particular, ground turmeric, cumin, coriander, ginger, and fresh or dried chilies are popular in Indian curries, and most Thai curries include kaffir lime leaves, finger root and Thai basil. But it is the particular blend of these, as well as the meat or vegetables used, which defines the curry. For example, rogan josh, of Kashmiri origin, is traditionally made with a red meat such as lamb or goat and is coloured and flavoured primarily by alkanet and Kashmiri chilies. Jalfrezi, which originates in Bengal, consists usually of some left-over meat served in a thick sauce that includes green chilli peppers. And massaman, a Thai curry most commonly made with chicken, is made with a curry paste that includes lemongrass and galangal.

Other common curry ingredients include yogurt, cream and coconut milk, and you can pretty easily tell where your curry has its origins by which one of these it calls for. Curries of Indian origin quite often call for yogurt or cream to thicken or enrich the sauce, and these additions are also good for making a spicy curry slightly milder. Be careful if you’re adding yogurt to your curry though, and make sure to add it a spoonful at a time and at a low temperature, otherwise you could end up with a big lump of curdled dairy. Thai curries almost always use unsweetened coconut milk which, in contrast to the thickening effect of cream, makes the curry soupy. A tip here though, coconut milk and coconut cream are not interchangeable; coconut cream is much thicker and much richer and is vegan option for making desserts such a panna cotta.

In conclusion, this quote: “There are as many types of curry as there are hands cooking it”. And also we may have to rethink asking “Do you fancy a curry for tea?” as what one person is thinking of when they’re asking could be a spicy goat rogan josh, and what another person is thinking of when they answer could be a mild chicken massaman – meaning either way one will be sorely disappointed.

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