DIRECCION NACIONAL DE EMPLEO
PRIORIDAD INSTITUCIONAL OBJETIVO INSTITUCIONAL INDICADOR Y META NOTAS TÉCNICAS
too thin, add coconut milk, milk or dried coconut and/ or evaporate with the lid off
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Apples and raisins are never used in Indian curries˚
Curries should be served in separate dishes, never withrice as a border
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Curries should be eaten with a dessert spoon and fork˚
Proper accompaniments include pappadums, chutneys,pickles, Bombay duck and sambals.
After many immigrants found employment in the restaurant and catering businesses and opened hundreds of small restaurants of their own. Their customers were initially other South Asians as well as British men who had lived in India or were stationed there during the War. Their menus featured dishes found in the cookbooks and on the tables of the Raj.
Companies such as Noons, Pathaks (later Pataks) and foods began to manufacture Indian spice mixtures and sauces, chutneys, pickles and other Indian products. In the s the emergence of the counter-culture and the Beatles’ visit to India contributed to the growing popularity of Indian food, as did Madhur Jaffrey’s books and television cooking series in the s.
The creation of Bangladesh in generated a new wave of immigrants who found employment in ‘curry houses’, the generic name for a generally downmarket Indian or Pakistani eating establishment. The curry house decor traditionally
featured red flock wallpaper (perhaps an attempt to replicate the environment of Raj-era clubs). Most of the customers turned up just after p.m., the closing time for pubs. ‘Going out for a curry’ after a night of hard drinking at weekends became a way of life for a certain segment of the population. Often the curries were prepared with ready-made sauces, giving the food a certain homogeneity. In his book, The Curry Bible, Pat Chapman lists the following sixteen curries as most popu- lar in British Indian restaurants: balti, bhoona, dhansak, jalfrezi, keema, kofta, korma, madras, masala, medium, pasanda, patia, phall, roghan josh, tikka masala curry and vindaloo – a list not very different from those given in the Indian Cookery Book published in .
How ‘authentic’ were their menus? The typical Indian restaurant menu throughout the world is largely an artificial creation. In Indian households, meals do not normally have a sequence of courses. The dishes arrive more or less at once and remain on the table throughout the meal. Most of the calo- ries come from starch, either rice or bread, and dal (boiled lentils), supplemented by small amounts of meat, fish and vege- tables, pickles, chutneys, salads and yogurt. The Western concept of a main course, usually meat, is alien to India, as are hors d’oeuvres and desserts.
To appeal to non-Indian customers, restaurant owners adapted Indian dishes to a Western format. As appetizers, they served street foods and snacks such as samosas, pakoras, kabobs and baskets of papads or pappadum, crunchy flat discs made from lentil flour and served with coriander and tamarind sauces. Dal was sometimes served as a soup, not as a core element of a meal. Sweets, normally eaten at festivals or as an afternoon snack, became desserts.
In the s tandoori restaurants became popular (although the first tandoor, a clay oven, had been imported in
by Veeraswamy’s). All these establishments were essen- tially imitators of Moti Mahal restaurant opened in New Delhi in by Kundan Lal Gujral. A refugee from Pakistan, Kundan Lal invented tandoori chicken: pieces of chicken mar- inated in yogurt and spices and roasted in a tandoor, which he had built to order. To please richer palates (and, some claim, use left-over tandoori chicken), he created butter chicken – pieces of roasted chicken served in a tomato, cream and butter sauce – the precursor of chicken tikka masala. Nans and other breads and kabobs cooked on long skewers in the tandoor were featured on the menu. Moti Mahal was one
of the very first restaurants in India serving Indian food that attracted a middle-class clientele.
The next sensation was balti cuisine, which started in south Birmingham in an area now called ‘the balti triangle’ and spread to other cities. Its origins are unclear. Some claim it originated in Baltistan, a province high in the Pakistan Himalayas, although the food there bears no resemblance to balti cuisine. Another explanation is that the word ‘balti’ means bucket in Hindi, perhaps a reference to the wok-like pot called a karahi or karhai. A similar dish is served in North America as karahi gosht, or frontier chicken (a reference to the North- West Frontier province).
To make a balti, pieces of marinated – usually precooked – meat, vegetables or seafood are stir-fried and served in a sauce of puréed onions, ginger, garlic, tomatoes, ground spices and fresh coriander. Aubergine, potato, mushrooms, corn, lentils and other ingredients may be added. A balti is cooked and served in the same pot and scooped up with pieces of baked bread. Side dishes and starters include fried onions, samosas, chutneys and pappadums. Often, patrons may bring their own alcoholic drinks. The popularity of the balti is easy to understand: it is delicious, easy to make, cheap and lets patrons create their own dishes and share them with others.
Balti and tandoori dishes were added to the menus of curry houses. The cooks adapted the ‘hotness’ of a dish to the diner’s taste, and it became a sign of manliness to eat a very hot curry, washed down by prodigious amounts of beer. Vindaloos were hot, but the hottest of all, for reasons unknown, were called phal, which means ‘fruit’ in Hindi. These macho connotations led to the adoption of the song ‘Vindaloo’ as an unofficial anthem for English football fans during the World Cup.
In the s and ’s curry recipes were popularized in cookbooks and magazines. Harvey Day’s Curries of India, which contains recipes for all the familiar Anglo-Indian dishes, became a bestseller. Pat Chapman, founder of the Curry Club in , has done the most to promote curry. His many books and publications give recipes for dishes found in curry houses and balti restaurants, making them accessible to non-Indians who want to make them at home.
To ‘purists’ who claim that the British public is being duped by restaurateurs serving inauthentic dishes, Chapman replies that commercial exigencies and the need for rapid service forces restaurants to adapt techniques and ingredi- ents different from those used in home cooking, and that ‘formula’ restaurant-style curries can in any case be superb.
Eating curry, the hotter the better, has become a feature of British pub and restaurant life.
Since Cobra Beer has sponsored a guide to the hundred best curry restaurants and balti houses in Britain based on reports from Curry Club members.
In Camellia Panjabi opened Bombay Brasserie in Kensington with the aim of celebrating regional cooking and challenging the downmarket perception of Indian restau- rants. Other top-end venues include the Red Fort, which opened in Soho in to serve upmarket northern Indian Muslim and tandoori dishes; the Panjabi sisters’ Chutney Mary in Chelsea (), featuring dishes from six regions of India; Cyrus Todiwala’s Café Spice Namaste (), which offers Goan, Parsee and other regional specialties; Zaikia; Chor Bazaar; and Cinnamon Club.
The latest episode in the saga of British curry is the emergence of very expensive Indian restaurants in London. In five Indian restaurants were awarded a Michelin star: Amaya, Benares, Quilon, Rasoi Vineet Bhatia and Tamarind. With their elegant decor, extensive wine lists, immaculate service and focus on regional ingredients, they are a far cry from the curry houses of old. Benares’s Atul Kochhar (the first Indian chef to win a Michelin star) even represented London and the South-East in the ’s Great British Menu competitions – the ultimate proof of how deeply Indian food has become integrated into British life.
Passage to India!
Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of man, The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again.
Lo, soul, the retrospect, brought forward; The old, most populous, wealthiest of Earth’s lands, The streams of the Indus and the Ganges, and their many affluent
(I, my shores of America walking to-day, behold, resuming all) Walt Whitman, Passage to India,