curry

When last I wrote it was the Nobel prize night. Two days later was a Thursday. After Gerhard Ertl's nobel prize talk at Chalmers, to a pretty full audience. I then started preparing for dinner.

It was the end of the season knytkalas (potluck) at Oceanen and I had gotten it in my head to make a curry. When I was in South Africa, and after going to Ham's parents' place in Durban, I decided I should learn to make Indian food. I found what looked to be a decent cookbook at a bookstore in some mall. Plus it was at the equivalent to a dollar store, so quite cheap. I also picked up a copy of Madam and Eve.

I pulled out the cookbook and started looking for something to make. It was a tossup between a vegetable or a mutton curry, and the deciding factor was getting mutton. I didn't find mutton at the local stores and only latter did I find the lamb sellers at Saluhallen. So veg curry it was.

I working on the dish I found a few interesting things about the book. It was published in England, not South Africa, and by an English author. That's perhaps why the recipe called for a turnip, which doesn't strike me as all that Indian. There's an image of "chilies drying in the sun", which is true. The picture was from New Mexico. It was a ristra hanging on an adobe house. Can you say "file photograph"? I knew you could!

The recipe itself had a problem. It described twice how to chop up the potatoes. First in "rough chunks" and second in "small pieces." I ended up having to improvise by looking at the final picture and thinking of how I wanted it to be. Even better was that I had never cooked with turnips or eggplants before. I found some nice web pages which helpfully explained.

I made 150% proportions and my pot wasn't big enough so I used two pots, but there wasn't enough liquid so the potatoes didn't boil enough. I decided to use a brute force solution, and picked out all the potatoes so I could boil them separately. You get the idea that this is taking a while?

I added the spices as suggested, tasked it, and it was bland. Very bland. In true English style bland. I think I added 4 times the spices until it finally tasted strong enough. I was worried that Swedes don't do so well with hot foods but Gudrun encouraged me to go for it, so I did. I had some South African mixed spices in a bag, with no ingredients list. I used that as well, which means I don't know all that went into it. Oh, and the coconut milk was the key to making the taste right.

Even then it didn't taste quite right, so I made a batch of rice to go along with it. I'm a jasmine fan, while a traditionalist would probably go for basmati. That passed my taste test.

Finally. All done. Took it to Oceanen and put it on the countertop with the other foods. Most brought things like cheese and cookies and bread, which I saw was the case in previous times. That's why I thought to bring something a bit more substantial. It went over quite well. By the end of the night all the curry was gone, and most of the rice. Gudrun said that when she tried it she wondered if I had toned down the spices a bit, but then a few seconds later the heat came.

That's one thing I like about Indian food. I remember ordering a sandwich in Cape Town (at the News Cafe on Main Road near Green Point Stadium, if you want to know) with peri-peri. It was tingly hot, but like a song with one note it didn't have much depth to it.