Indian Curries

Indian cookery is not the cookery of a single nationality or of recent civilization. It dates centuries back and is a combination of the cookery of many nationalities. The result is a complicated art dependent on religion, health, customs, taste and climatic conditions. The westerner does not realize this until he has lived among Indian for the greater part of his life. 

The Indian cook does not depend on weights and measure; he uses his judgment and experience instead, so it is a difficult matter for outsiders to follow him. Failures and disappoints are bound to ensure unless you have something to rely upon.

Curries are universally known, and yet outside India how impossible it seems to get a curry made in the proper way.  It is a fallacy to suppose that real curries are unobtainable in European countries. This erroneous idea, promulgated especially by those who have been resident in Indian, with regard to the ingredients used and the methods employed, is largely responsible for the poor imitations dished up as Indian curries by really capable housewives and eminent chefs to make perfect curries.

In Indian, the various ingredients used in the making of a curry depend largely on the person making the curry and it is customary, day by day for such ingredients to be ground separately into a paste with a little water on what is known as curry stone.  A little of each of these separately ground ingredients is used for making the curry the proportions are entirely dependents on the taste and judgment of the cook. Weights and measures are seldom used and the experience thus gained makes them accomplished in the art of curry making. In many cases instead of worrying over the various ingredients curry powder can be used.

A really good curry powder that will keep for years, and always produce a perfect curry, is made up of many different seeds, roots and spices, well chosen, well proportional and well blended, neither too hot or pungent or too vapid and unattractive.

Curry acts on the digestive system with the very best results, for many of its ingredients are carminative in action, apart from being aromatic and appetizing.