Name: Curry
ISBN: 9780195320015

Lizzie Collingham

Elizabeth M. Collingham

An authoritative history of the foods of India, complete with recipes, ranges from the imperial kitchen of the Mughal invader Babur to the smoky cookhouse of the British Raj and includes information on the influence of various food traditions on the evolution of Indian specialties.

A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors

Curry

Laura Mauler

An enjoyable look at a highly nuanced cuisine. Being one of the guilty people who goes into every Indian restaurant expecting to find and order my favorite dish (paneer makhani 4ever!), this book was a wakeup call. The most fascinating part was when the British Empire took hold because it showed how an entirely new cuisine (Anglo-Indian) was formed by British prejudices, as well as thoughtfully discussing what happened when Hindu purity rules around eating and drinking came up against British colonial social norms. Also quite interesting to me was the spread of Indian and Anglo-Indian food into Great Britain and America, since it spoke directly to my own experiences eating these cuisines.

Not sure that I'll be making any of the delicious-sounding recipes found at the end of each chapter because, as the author notes throughout the book, real Indian cooking is extremely complex. Every recipe needing a cupboard-full of ingredients to chop and grind and marinate is too involved for my style of cooking. Label me a happy eater, leaving the cookery to the experts.

Curry serves up a delectable history of Indian cuisine, ranging from the imperial kitchen of the Mughal invader Babur to the smoky cookhouse of the British Raj.In this fascinating volume, the first authoritative history of Indian food, Lizzie Collingham reveals that almost every well-known Indian dish is the product of a long history of invasion and the fusion of different food traditions. We see how, with the arrival of Portuguese explorers and the Mughal horde, the cooking styles and ingredients of central Asia, Persia and Europe came to the subcontinent, where over the next four centuries they mixed with traditional Indian food to produce the popular cuisine that we know today. Portuguese spice merchants, for example, introduced vinegar marinades and the British contributed their passion for roast meat. When these new ingredients were mixed with native spices such as cardamom and black pepper, they gave birth to such popular dishes as biryani, jalfrezi, and vindaloo. In fact, vindaloo is an adaptation of the Portuguese dish carne de vinho e alhos--the name "vindaloo" a garbled pronunciation of vinho e alhos--and even "curry" comes from the Portuguese pronunciation of an Indian word. Finally, Collingham describes how Indian food has spread around the world, from the curry houses of London to the railway stands of Tokyo, where karee raisu (curry rice) is a favorite Japanese comfort food. We even visit Madras Mahal, the first Kosher Indian restaurant, in Manhattan.Richly spiced with colorful anecdotes and curious historical facts, and attractively designed with 34 illustrations, 5 maps, and numerous recipes, Curry is vivid, entertaining, and delicious--a feast for food lovers everywhere.

Curry A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors

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