On the Curry Trail

The food anthology eventually took a contemporary literary turn. I still thought it saddening that a country with a score of sophisticated and distinct cuisines, where eating out was a passion and eating at home a form of duel-by-khansama, had no accessible food history of our own.

Curry is the history of a dish whose very name is contested: most Indians sneer at 8220;curry powders8221;, and yet, curry is probably the most significant Indian export, outdoing even that other popular export, the software geek. Collingham is a historian who drank her first Bombay lassi in 1994, fell in love with vegetarian thalis and out of love with mulligatawny soup. Her curiosity and passion fuelled this wonderful 8220;biography8221;.

If you8217;re about to question Collingham8217;s credentials on the grounds of authenticity, pause to consider that the Indian chilli was unknown before the Portuguese brought it here in the 15th century; it remained alien to the north until the Marathas brought it with them in the 17th century. Or consider the parable of the chicken tikka masala, its pungent tomato soup-onion-and-cream gravy invented to please a foreign palate by a harassed Indian chef in a British restaurant. The chef may have been rooted in the migrant community of Sylhetis, who got their start taking over fish-and-chip shops and selling curry and rice alongside.

Collingham gets notions of authenticity out of the way along with caste rituals and food taboos, taking down a few sacred cows as she goes. The sacred cow, she observes, was not all that sacred in the 1st century AD, but had become holier-than-thou by the time of Babur and Manucci. Her chapter on Biryani is a romp through Mughal culinary history. The mango helps Babur and his men forget their much-missed melons, Akbar8217;s kitchens where Persian pilau meets Hindustani spices and creates biryani is as much an experiment in synthesis as his court, and Jahangir develops an equal fondness for Gujarati khichari as for his wine. 8216;Vindaloo8217; looks at the Portuguese influence, especially on baking, with those dariols, conserves and layered cakes like the bebinca; 8216;Korma8217; at the East Indian merchants who ate the staple diet similar to the Islamic and Christian worlds at the time, acquiring a taste for arrack punch and paan alongside; and 8216;Madras Curry8217; and 8216;Curry Powder8217; look at some of the more bizarre attempts to introduce East to West in British cooking. My Constance Spry cookery book insists that an 8220;authentic chicken curry8221; includes apples, raisins, dessicated coconuts, sultanas and cream.

By the time we8217;ve got to 8216;Chai8217;, a meditation on the humble cuppa, now reinvented as chai lattes, I8217;m gorged on Collingham8217;s comfortable scholarship. I8217;m no longer surprised to learn in the last chapter that Indian food is popular in Japan 8212; where the 8220;authentic8221; curry was introduced by a fleeing revolutionary. Rashbehari Bose was on the run from the British when he came to Japan and found shelter with the Black Dragon society. He helped his Japanese father-in-law open an Indian restaurant. Nakamurya, in Tokyo8217;s Shinjuku district, apparently still serves an RB curry. Revolutionary cuisine, anyone.