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The roots of Japan's Indian curry

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Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#151

Post by spprashant »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #3

Interesting! I take issue with the common claim that 'curry' isn't a thing in a 'real' Indian restaurant. I did a quick survey online and could not find a single solitary Indian restaurant menu without curry on it. From the fanciest to the common takeout joint. There are even chains like 'Curry House'. Let's tone down the virtue signaling in food reviews. It's silly. There are 150 languages in India; there are as man…

Curry loosely translates to gravy. Without a more specific term describing the type of curry it's a little pointless.

Ever go to an Italian restaurant and say "I ll have the pasta"?

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#152

Post by gumby »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #145
gumby wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had a friend who ran a restaurant in Palo Alto. He had been trained in a three Michelin star restaurant in Burgundy. When they opened they had rabbit, squab, and other great dishes, but hardly anyone would order them. Steak and salmon were the most commonly ordered. It wasn’t worth buying what is considered more “exotic” by the clientele — they just couldn’t sell enough. But when they threw a party at home…!

Rabbit isn’t really exotic, I mean, maybe it is just in the USA? You can get rabbit at some Chinese restraints in Seattle, next to frogs and snails and such. I’m guessing there is some demand in the Chinese community for such meat, but it’s weird to hear rabbit considered exotic (like horse meat, both of which often end up in American dog food).

American cuisine is extremely pedestrian, and basically kid’s food. That includes the local adaptations of foreign cuisines (every country adapts foreign cuisine to local tastes, not picking on the US here).

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#153

Post by gumby »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #142
gumby wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I grew up visiting many Japanese monuments, including the last stand of the INA's holding place in India where Subhas Chandra Bose worked with the Japanese. Rash Behari Bose (the subject of the article) and Subhas Chandra Bose were entirely different people from different generations.

I'm not that aware but reading Wikipedia on Subhas Chandra Bose[1], they have definitely fought and ideated together as part of the INA (Indian National Army). Here is a sentence from Wikipedia -- "In July (1943), at a meeting in Singapore, Rash Behari Bose handed over control of the organisation to Subhas Chandra Bose." 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhas_Chandra_Bose

They did not overlap much.

I consider Subhas Bose an odious figure while Rash Bose is a much more sympathetic and interesting one.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#154

Post by unmole »

dagmx wrote: post #138
unmole wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That doesn’t mean the dish is “curry”. Is this supposed to be some metaphysical argument? The dish is literally chicken curry i.e. kodi kura .

The point is: - curry is used in Britain (and any place they colonized) to refer to any and all spiced gravy, not just sauce. - Kari in Tamil (widely considered to be the root of the word curry) refers to a dark, spiced sauce. It doesn’t mention it’s a gravy and it likely referred to a black peppercorn based sauce. It is simply an element of a dish like a bechamel. It is not a dish by itself. - kodi kura is a specifi…

> Kura doesn’t mean curry, its closest English translation would be a stew

FFS, no! A dry stir fry is called a podi kura, with podi meaning dry. A stew like curry would be called a pulusu kura.

> Lastly, you take great pains to say that Hyderabad is culturally and politically independent from the British rule. So by that logic it wouldn’t even be a usable argument to say Curry is derived from those words.

Telugu speakers of Hyderabad State used the same word as their colinguists in the British ruled Madras Presidency. This would suggest the term predates the annexation of the Northern Circars by the British who could have then adopted it.

> At the end of the day, the most well known etymology for curry is a mistranslation of the Tamil `Kari` where they mistook a single component of a dish to be the whole dish.

At the end of the day, curry is a perfectly valid coinage and is cognate with kura and used to mean the exact same thing.

> It was further perpetuated in the west as a stereotyped dish. Many Indians accept the word curry today because it was introduced into our zeitgeist but the concept of Curry as it is in the Uk has no foundation in actual Indian cuisine.

Curry is quintessentially Indian. The fact that some Indian languages don't have an equivalent encompassing term doesn't change that.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#156

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gumby wrote: post #152
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rabbit isn’t really exotic, I mean, maybe it is just in the USA? You can get rabbit at some Chinese restraints in Seattle, next to frogs and snails and such. I’m guessing there is some demand in the Chinese community for such meat, but it’s weird to hear rabbit considered exotic (like horse meat, both of which often end up in American dog food).

American cuisine is extremely pedestrian, and basically kid’s food. That includes the local adaptations of foreign cuisines (every country adapts foreign cuisine to local tastes, not picking on the US here).

I’m not really sure what American food is anymore. What does an American food restaurant have abroad anyways beyond McDonald’s. Maybe a soul food or texmex place in Beijing counts as such?

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#157

Post by danans »

n1b0m wrote: post #140
danans wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indian when referring to the cuisine doesn't really refer to the political entity of modern India. Most of those restaurants serve a version of Punjabi food anyways.

Why is that? Why did Bengalis start up restaurants serving Punjabi food?

Not sure. Maybe they tried both and Punjabi cuisine was more popular. Outside of Bengali enclaves, there are still comparatively few Bengali restaurants compared to Punjabi, Gujarati or South Indian.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#158

Post by kondu »

tkadur wrote: post #110
anuraj wrote: post #46

"Now to be clear, India has no such dish as a curry. No self-respecting Indian restaurant has a "curry" on their menu. They would have a Palak Paneer or a Malai Kofta or a Murgh Makhani - all of which we lump into "curry" - but no "curry" - This is patently wrong. Curry is a South Indian word referring to vegetables originally (Malakkarry means vegetables). Come to Kerala - you have Moru Curry (Butter Milk Curry) , E…

> Curry is a South Indian word referring to vegetables originally (Malakkarry means vegetables) FWIW, Kannada has no such word. ಕರಿಬೇವು ("karibevu") refers specifically to the curry plant and (as far as I know) there is no word "kari" which refers to curries in general. My parents had always told me that "curry" was, therefore, a generalization and anglicization of various dishes containing curry leaves. But seeing a…

You seem to have missed the obvious Tharakaari (the Kannada word for vegetables)?

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#159

Post by j45 »

unmole wrote: post #86
j45 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably just chicken something. Well said.

I assure you, if you ask for chicken curry in any restaurant in Hyderabad, they'll know exactly what you mean. They might not necessarily serve it though.

I’m not sure how you got that from what I said but sounds good.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#160

Post by JoeAltmaier »

kizunajp wrote: post #4
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #3

Interesting! I take issue with the common claim that 'curry' isn't a thing in a 'real' Indian restaurant. I did a quick survey online and could not find a single solitary Indian restaurant menu without curry on it. From the fanciest to the common takeout joint. There are even chains like 'Curry House'. Let's tone down the virtue signaling in food reviews. It's silly. There are 150 languages in India; there are as man…

I was making the claim that if you went to a restaurant in India, you wouldn't normally find any menu item called "curry", because curry is a genre of foods and not one single item in Indian cuisine.

Sorry, I should have stayed quiet. I'd been scrolling through videos all trumpeting their only true recipe for whatever, and was sensitized.
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