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Christmas Recipes: Main Dishes. No.7 of 12 - Garlic Poussins and Kumquats
Christmas recipe Serves: 6
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour
Calories per serving: 580
Not suitable for freezing
Christmas recipe ingredients:
* poussins, 3, about 700 g (1.5 lb) each
* salt and pepper
* kumquats,...
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THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF PEANUTS By: Lara Velez HISTORY Before I begin with the history of peanuts you should probably know that the peanut is not a nut. The "pea"nut is actually more closely related to the pea. It is a member of the legumes...
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Curry - A Journey
Due to a childhood in the Middle East, I was practically brought
up on curry. My first memories of it are eating curried goat in
the fire station of Dubai airport in about 1962. My dad was the
airport manager and the Chief Fire Officer and his family were
our good friends and neighbours. The firemen cooked for our two
families - fiery hot curry for the adults and a much milder
version for us kids. Some of the men were of Arabic origins and
some of Indian so I think the resulting meal was something of a
mixture.
I remember we were offered chairs and cutlery but we preferred
to sit on the floor and in the traditional manner, ate only with
our right hands. This posed something of a problem for my mother
as she was left-handed - she avoided making inexcusable gaffes
by sitting on her left hand until the meal was over.
We learnt to roll rice into balls and with the aid of chapattis
(wheat flour flatbreads), scooped up the curry and popped it
into our mouths without making too much mess. I don't think I
ate curry again in that way until many years later when I
visited Goa and, at a spice plantation, was once again faced
with banana leaf plates and fingers only. Bizarrely, in a nearby
clearing, was a pink porcelain, pedestal hand basin with a hose
pipe attached to the tap, fully supplied with soap and hand
towels.
During those days of being expatriates in foreign lands, the
British developed a liking for curry lunch on a Sunday.
Doubtless this originated in India in the days of the Raj but
still found its way to the Middle East and Africa. A group of
friends would gather either at one of their houses or the local
club. There would be beers or gins and tonics first (cola or
fizzy orange for the kids). There wouldn't be a choice of
curries, as I recall, it was always chicken and no matter where
we ate it and it always tasted the same. The accompaniments
didn't vary much either but we didn't mind. There would be
poppadoms, mango
chutney and a variety of sambals - chopped
fruits and salad stuff which might include any or all of banana,
pineapple, apple, tomato, cucumber, onion, desiccated coconut,
peanuts and raisins or sultanas. With luck there would be
chapattis too.
My next curry experiences were back in England. How different it
all was. Indian restaurants furnished in red velvet with flocked
wallpaper in gold. All sorts of different curries - not only the
main ingredient but the mix of spices and flavourings. There
were choices of plain or spicy poppadoms, different breads and
vegetable curries and dahls as well, no sambals though! On the
down side, these curries were often rather greasy and we always
thought of them as being terribly fattening - naughty but oh so
nice! The saviour, if conscience got the better of us was
Tandoori-cooked meats. These were marinated in yoghurt and spice
paste and cooked in a Tandoor (an earthenware charcoal oven), so
were in effect grilled and much healthier.
Change again then when I finally visited India in 1988 and
discovered that meat curries were the exception rather than the
rule. Many Indians are vegetarians so paneer (similar to cottage
cheese) is popular as are the many dishes made with pulses and
vegetables. There was no trace of the greasiness found in
restaurants in the UK and the flavours were quite different too.
This voyage of discovery culminated in a determination to learn
how to reproduce Indian food in my own home but more of that in
another article.
About the author:
Liz Canham:
As well as a love of Asian cooking and travel as you can see in
her Asian Food and Cookery and Travellers' Tales websites, Liz seeks to
help newcomers to the world of internet marketing from her Liz-e-Biz.com
website.
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