Santa Rosa chef shares secrets to making delicious curries at home
When people hear the word “curry,” they often think of the Indian subcontinent, where the warm, aromatic spice blend found its way into classic dishes such as chicken tikki masala and lamb vindaloo.
The origin of those dishes reaches back further than was previously imagined. In 2013, archaeologists discovered human teeth and pottery shards with 4,000-year-old ginger, garlic and turmeric in starch grains during an excavation in an ancient town west of Delhi.
“Curry is not only among the world’s most popular dishes, it also may be the oldest continuously prepared cuisine on the planet,” Andrew Lawler wrote in the online magazine Slate.
Although curry first took root in India thousands of years ago, it has since spread all over the world, creating new variations in neighboring cultures, where the curries continue to evolve while providing a tasty slice of history.
“Curry powder” is actually a British term used to describe India’s aromatic garam masala spice blend - roasted, crushed spices such as coriander and cumin seeds, black peppercorn, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, star anise and cinnamon.
“After the British ruled Indian, they fell in love with their dishes,” said chef/instructor Mei Ibach of Santa Rosa, who grew up in Malaysia. “The East India Co. was created to export garam masala.
Garam masala means “heated up spices.” Meanwhile, the origins of the word “curry” can be traced to the Tamil word kari, meaning “spiced sauce” or “gravy.” So wherever you tuck into a fragrant curry dish - from Thailand and Malaysia to Japan and the UK - you’re always going to slurp up a savory sauce carrying its own, distinctive whiff of spices.
“Curry is like mole in Mexico,” Ibach said. “It’s always a family recipe and the backbone of home cooking.”
When the Indians started to travel in the 1900s, she said, they took their native spices with them to Asia, Europe and Africa, where they were incorporated into the native cuisines.
“The world of spices spread,” Ibach said. “That’s how those countries came to use those spices. The Moroccans use the cumin, coriander, nutmeg, cardamom and turmeric as well.”
Over time, the Portuguese explorers also brought chiles from Mexico and South America back to Asia through the spice trade. After that, peppers from the Capsicum family started heating up the curry sauces in India and beyond.
While the Indians stick to blending dry spices for their curries, the Thai prefer to combine fresh herbs such as lemongrass and galangal (Thai ginger) with dried chiles. Their spice blends are referred to as a paste rather than a powder because of their fresh quality.
The green curry paste uses fresh, green chiles, and the red chile paste uses dried red chiles. Other Thai curries include Massaman, a rich but relatively mild curry; and Panang, which is thick, salty and sweet.
“The Massaman curry of Thailand resonates with the Indian curry because they added dried turmeric,” Ibach said. “The Panang curry has shrimp paste because of the influence of the Malaysian spices to the south.”
Like the Southern Indians, both the Thai and Malaysians use coconut milk as the liquid base for the curry sauce, while most of India relies on yogurt or milk. The milks help tame the spice in the chiles.
In Malaysia - a blend of native Malay, Chinese, Indian, Baba-Nyonya (Chinese men and Malay spouses) and Portuguese settlers - the hybrid culture developed their own exotic curry paste. The blend incorporates some of the dry spices of Indian curries with locally grown herbs, spices and nuts to create the aromatic rempah, which means “spice paste.”
In the old days, Ibach said, the women would blend the paste by hand in a mortar and pestle using Malaysia’s indigenous candlenuts, galangal, dried red chile, shallots, fermented shrimp paste, peppercorns and lemongrass.
“In the days of my mom’s generation, you would have to display your skill of making rempah to your in-laws, using a mortar and pestle, before you got married,” she said. “It was all done by hand so you could control the consistency and add the spices at a different time.”
Nowadays, modern cooks still roast the whole spices in a cast-iron pan to bring out the flavor and aromas, then throw it all into a food processor to create the complex spice paste.
To save time, Ibach said, make your basic spice pastes ahead of time and keep them in the freezer, then pull them out when you’re ready to cook. Also, try to make your curries a day or two in advance, so the flavors can deepen and blend together in the fridge.
Most curries go well with some kind or rice on the side to soak up the complex, delicious sauce.
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