The day of the curry

 

The moment Asian food went mainstream in the west

By Nury Vittachi

*

So, Europe's famous Michelin Guide critics have now arrived in Asia.

           But you know, the key event in the globalization of food occurred a long time ago—in 1966, in fact. I know. I was there.

Yes, your humble narrator was present at the precise moment Asian food arrived in the West.

         Now I'm not talking about the first individual spring roll or poppadum which travelled out of the East in some journeyman's pocket. That momentous event goes tragically unrecorded.

No, I am referring to the moment when the world's most popular food, curry, first nosed its way into MAINSTREAM Western society.
*
The time: Early summer, 1966.

The place: North London. A few miles down the street, the Beatles were recording Sgt Pepper on a four-track tape machine. I had been assigned to attend a local school, wearing shorts and a green cap.

That summer, London officials decided that the primitive, scattered tribes of Britain had developed enough to cope with curry—a strange and exotic dish from Asia—on the School Dinners List.
*
That morning, teacher had an announcement to make. "You will be having a new item for lunch today—curry. I hope you will all be very adventurous." (I noticed she had brought a packed lunch that day.)

           The children turned to stare at me. "Curry," a girl called Abigail said. "That's YOUR type of food. Disgusting."

           "Have you tried it?" I asked.

           "Eww, of course not!" she said, outraged at the suggestion.

           "Then how do you know it's disgusting?"

           "Because EVERYONE knows it's disgusting," she said. The rest of the class nodded fiercely at this indisputable logic.

I was gripped by foreboding. "You may not like it," I conceded. "It's not like English food. It has a taste."

            "It's a hider," concluded Abigail.

           School lunch items were divided into hiders and others. The non-hiders list was very short, and for many children consisted of only one item: fried potatoes.

Everything else was a hider. There were no meal choices and we were forbidden to leave anything on our plates, so we had no choice but to hide unwanted food items in our clothing, desks or satchels.

           By experimentation, my classmates had discovered that the relatively thick material of our green felt jackets was a more watertight container than our thin trouser pockets.

           Being a typically obedient Asian child, I ate pretty much anything I was ordered to eat. I would have eaten bones, bugs, gristle or stones, and indeed, frequently did.
*
Anyway, when lunchtime of that historic day finally arrived, most of the class members were busy lining their jacket pockets with scrap paper.

And then the curry was wheeled in. I stared at it.

           It was a sort of thick yellow-green sauce. It smelled of sugar. The main ingredients were sultanas and gristle.

           "What's that?" I asked.

           "Curry," the dinner lady said.

           "No, it's not," I said.

           "Yes it is," she said, pointing to the label on the serving tray. "That's wot it says 'ere."

         I ate it. There was no chili in it, but I told the other children that they would not be able to eat it, as it was much too spicy for them.

           Stung into action by this comment, several of the boys tried it.

           And the takeover of Western tastebuds by Asian foods began. 
 

Comments

[Lurker_31]

I remember that sort of curry. It took about 30 years for authentic curry to go mainstream in the UK, but there were always places such as Gaylords in central London that delivered the real stuff

[unconvinced]

I;m not convinced that curry is the number one food in the world, i think the burger is probably still ahead

[Hayat]

Instant noodles, that's the No. 1 food on the planet. The corollary is that the globalization of food occurred far earlier - around Marco Polo's time, if legend is to be believed.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

Curry plus burger= omigod, waht are the possiblities?

[fardel]

Marco polo is not a legend; He DID bring noodles to the West
I remember the sixties:I was learning English ; my teacher said that "the English" would take the best piece of meat and boil it to shoe sole tenderness, then they would add Mint sauce to give it taste ; the only exception was fish and chips ;I tried that dish once,,,Deep dried fried fish to rock tenderness.
It is not surprising it took them half a century to come to accept the taste of curry.

[Neil Thomson]

Dear Nuri,

I fear your experience leads you astray.

"English" curry, a yellow brown gloopy substance eked out with raisins and sugar was on my grammar school menu in 1953!

By all accounts it had been on the menu since the earliest days of the Raj or even Henry VIII who founded the school in between marrying and slaughtering young women. I may be exaggerating the time period slightly.

Even my very English Mum made "curry" from time to time in the 50's using products from Sharwoods.

When I was playing rugby in 1959 for the Old Boys on Saturday nights we used to drink enormous quantities of draught Bass or Worthington and top it off with egg curry at the Kashmir restaurant (run by Sikhs) in Leicester. (I will not dwell on the consequences of this combination on Sunday morning). We always ate egg curry because it was the cheapest item on the menu.

At that time Chinese restaurants always served curry, of similar authenticity to their Chinese food.

For many years I thought there were two types of curry, 'genuine' curry from Pakistan and Chinese curry which was essentially a stir fry meat stew containing dubious animal remains into which someone had tipped raw curry powder.

I now realise there were 4 kinds of curry, English curry laced with raisins and sugar, Indian (i.e. as prepared by unemployed Bengali factory workers), Chinese (as aforesaid) and the much more recent Japanese curry. The stuff eaten on the subcontinent bears no relation to any of the foregoing and therefore is not authentic.

On an historical note, Jane Austen refers in Mansfield Park to a practical joke played by a nabob on someone suffering from the heat of the curry he was serving. "Try this chili!"

Neil Thomson
Rose Bay NSW
Australia

[Adalina Lo]

Alas, I abhor the fact that the non-Asians' own weird versions of curry, fried rice, and other popular dishes are passed for the real stuff.

Then we get even more crap, "EWWW your fried rice is disgusting!"

Then you try to explain that the "real" thing is excellent.

Then you are met with a contemptuous, questioning glance by ignoramuses.

Sigh.

[Robyn]

Dear Nuri,

I grew up with curries made by my Mum who learned it from her very English foster mother, who came out to Australia on a clipper ship in the early 1900's! Admittedly there were no chillies within cooee of the dish and we used to fight over who got the most pieces of PINEAPPLE, but in the 1950's it was very tasty indeed! :)

[Mr Jam]

Raisins? Sultanas? PINEAPPLE?

Oh, you POOR, POOR, unfortunates. What did they do to you?

Please come to dinner and I will try to undo the damage done by your unthinking forebears...

[Santox]

Dear Nury,
You've tickled my tastebuds to spice up to ...
the Malaccan Devil's curry,
the Thai Green curry,
the Nyonya homecooked curry,
the Little India's Masala Chicken curry,
the Northern Indian Nut- Gravied Mutton curry,
the Chinese Laksa curry mee,
the Malay coconut fish curry,
the Indonesian soto rice curry,
the Indian Vegetarian Mixed Vege Curry,
which can be experienced all in KL.
Come and taste our curry.

[Santox]

Dear Nury,
You've tickled my tastebuds to spice up to ...
the Malaccan Devil's curry,
the Thai Green curry,
the Nyonya homecooked curry,
the Little India's Masala Chicken curry,
the Northern Indian Nut- Gravied Mutton curry,
the Chinese Laksa curry mee,
the Malay coconut fish curry,
the Indonesian soto rice curry,
the Indian Vegetarian Mixed Vege Curry,
which can be experienced all in KL.
Come and taste our curry.

[Quentin]

And the next big advent in global food domination will be the Aussie Christmas BBQ.
Yes - there is nothing to rival the taste of sausages burnt to within an inch of charcol, steaks that require a small chainsaw, rissoles that remain a lovely shade of pink in the middle. And if done correctly, this is all mixed with 40 degree heat and fly large enough to carry off a small child.
Honestly, you good folk in Asia and the UK have no idea what you've been deprived of!
Merry Christmas all.

[Mr Jam]

It must be weird having Christmas in the middle of summer, as you Aussies do. Especially since all the trappings of Christmas (the snow scenes, the evergreen tree, the cards, the movies) all have winter themes.

Mind you, I've just come back from Australia, and the standard of cooking there is really good. And with the A$ down, the rest of us can actually afford it. But I had a problem with the portion sizes, which are similar to America. I could never eat more than half a meal.