What it starts out as, and where it ends up is a complexity that one figures out only through time.
Anything worth a little time is going to be something special in the end.
They say, if you give any one person a recipe for a curry and they were to share that recipe with another, both will result in a different taste. Naturally, right? You're thinking, maybe it's the quality of ingredients, or the water, maybe it's the level of skills.
Could be.
But tradition has said, it is none of those. What makes each attempt at a recipe by different people so unique across the board, is the hands.
Hands choose the ingredients, slice the onions, mince the garlic and cut the chillies. It is the hands that infuse the oils with spices, and herbs.
The principal is this:
Hands, my hands, your hands....anyone's hands will impart what is most vital to a curry. This is what I call Fundamentals of Flavour...
1) The Choice: We all choose ingredients based on price, comfort, quality and availability. Your hands take the time to pick and choose The choice is the freedom, and the freedom you impart is the key to the flavour fundamentals.
2) The Cut: Skilled and steady hand do all the cutting, chopping, mincing, grinding, pulsing, crushing and slicing. You may prefer a combination. You may chop finely or leave in chunks. The texture defines the mouth feel. How does it sit on your plate? Is you curry runny like soup or does it stand its own like a stew? Texture means how you taste something is how you feel on your palette, move around your mouth hitting different taste buds.
3) The Quantity: Measuring by the pinch, smidgen, spoonful and palmful. Hands. How much you use of a particular flavour agent will of course determine the flavour profile. Blistering bursts of peppers, sweet-sour of tomatoes, the pungency of garlic and the bite of ginger...a fluctuation in any will take a curry to a new place, a different dimension, if you will.
4) The Spice: Also subject to the Quantity principle has a more distinct affect on a curry. Spice, simply put, is as basic as pepper and salt or in a more deeply cerebral way, a power statement like cumin, cayenne, fenugreek, coriander and cardamom. Thumbs in hands crush and release the scent of dried herbs and dusty spices off the shelf.
*Side note: The oil is key; Fat is Flavour: Choosing this fatty canvas is important as the cooking basics state that fat extracts flavour. Don't believe me? Try boiling your spices without sauteeing them first. After you spit it out, chug mouth wash and brush your teeth you'll know why. The fat you choose may or may not take a toll on the flavour and of course using animal fat will be give you a wildly different taste than using oils, so with pleasure refer to Fundamental #1.
5) The Method: What do you do first? How do you do you it? Are you a chop n' drop cooker, who turns on the pot first and as the label states; "chops" and then "drops" into the pot at various different stages? Or you a method to the madness cooker, who cuts it all up at once, and puts it all in at once banking on a hope and a prayer? Maybe you're like me, a strategist, the one who chops, prepares and is thoughtful and patient while cooking. Developing the nuances layer by layer.
6) The Time: Do you plan ahead? Or do you quickly whip your curry up in 30 minutes or less? The time, next to the choice and fat fundamentals, is quite critical. The time is what we all tend to focus on the most because it's what we have the least of.
Growing up, my mother's curry took time. She planned ahead from the morning until it was time to execute. She too was a strategist, quietly cutting her ingredients with a worn out steak knife and sawing away at chicken pieces to make bite-sized portions.
She always chose to use a whole chicken as her logic made sense, a whole chicken is cheaper than buying a few pieces of breast, leg and thigh meat. She could just clean it up herself. This process of babying the meat seems important to her as she took the time to pull back the unwanted skin, break through the joints and wash and pat dry the flesh. She kept the bones as it imparted flavour but it also meant that you waste less meat as cutting away flesh from bone can be quite tedious.
She preferred to slice onions whereas I like to chop mine finely. She chopped finely her ginger and garlic while I preferred to crush mine into a paste. She always had more garlic than ginger - garlic outnumbering ginger 2:1. Her heat was now on and the wobbly cast iron karahi was propped on the burner. It sat gracefully on the electric coil, kind hitched to the side as if it were striking a pose on this heated cat-walk. And so it should stay until the process is over and it's empty vessel is entirely full of her mystic concoction that is the Curry.
The process was methodical. The oils warming slowly, the sizzling of onions and the toasting of garlic and ginger. The cupboard opens and her array of spice began to fall down like puffs of snow, with electric yellows, dusty reds, earthy browns and greens. An aroma that with every loving spoonful grew more intoxicating and nourishing.
And with that comes the last Flavour Fundamental...
7) The Love: Combining your choices, the cutting, how much of each herb, spices and aromatics as the tumble into that crazy pot is all given the time it needs to become happy, jolly, and merry. It's the love that a mother, an uncle or a grandparent pours into each step, mastering each fundamental with experience, grace and wisdom.
It is the love that you taste, it is the caring hands and the heart felt dreams of success, happiness and strength that is in every steaming bowl of curry. It is the high notes of salty, smokey, savoury, goodness and undertones of sweet, tangy and hearty. A generation goes and the recipes find their way to the present.
Written by hand, but not on paper...On hearts...
What an evolution it is, a curry.
xo,
The Girl Who Likes to Cook
Anything worth a little time is going to be something special in the end.
They say, if you give any one person a recipe for a curry and they were to share that recipe with another, both will result in a different taste. Naturally, right? You're thinking, maybe it's the quality of ingredients, or the water, maybe it's the level of skills.
Could be.
But tradition has said, it is none of those. What makes each attempt at a recipe by different people so unique across the board, is the hands.
Hands choose the ingredients, slice the onions, mince the garlic and cut the chillies. It is the hands that infuse the oils with spices, and herbs.
The principal is this:
Hands, my hands, your hands....anyone's hands will impart what is most vital to a curry. This is what I call Fundamentals of Flavour...
1) The Choice: We all choose ingredients based on price, comfort, quality and availability. Your hands take the time to pick and choose The choice is the freedom, and the freedom you impart is the key to the flavour fundamentals.
2) The Cut: Skilled and steady hand do all the cutting, chopping, mincing, grinding, pulsing, crushing and slicing. You may prefer a combination. You may chop finely or leave in chunks. The texture defines the mouth feel. How does it sit on your plate? Is you curry runny like soup or does it stand its own like a stew? Texture means how you taste something is how you feel on your palette, move around your mouth hitting different taste buds.
3) The Quantity: Measuring by the pinch, smidgen, spoonful and palmful. Hands. How much you use of a particular flavour agent will of course determine the flavour profile. Blistering bursts of peppers, sweet-sour of tomatoes, the pungency of garlic and the bite of ginger...a fluctuation in any will take a curry to a new place, a different dimension, if you will.
4) The Spice: Also subject to the Quantity principle has a more distinct affect on a curry. Spice, simply put, is as basic as pepper and salt or in a more deeply cerebral way, a power statement like cumin, cayenne, fenugreek, coriander and cardamom. Thumbs in hands crush and release the scent of dried herbs and dusty spices off the shelf.
*Side note: The oil is key; Fat is Flavour: Choosing this fatty canvas is important as the cooking basics state that fat extracts flavour. Don't believe me? Try boiling your spices without sauteeing them first. After you spit it out, chug mouth wash and brush your teeth you'll know why. The fat you choose may or may not take a toll on the flavour and of course using animal fat will be give you a wildly different taste than using oils, so with pleasure refer to Fundamental #1.
5) The Method: What do you do first? How do you do you it? Are you a chop n' drop cooker, who turns on the pot first and as the label states; "chops" and then "drops" into the pot at various different stages? Or you a method to the madness cooker, who cuts it all up at once, and puts it all in at once banking on a hope and a prayer? Maybe you're like me, a strategist, the one who chops, prepares and is thoughtful and patient while cooking. Developing the nuances layer by layer.
6) The Time: Do you plan ahead? Or do you quickly whip your curry up in 30 minutes or less? The time, next to the choice and fat fundamentals, is quite critical. The time is what we all tend to focus on the most because it's what we have the least of.
Growing up, my mother's curry took time. She planned ahead from the morning until it was time to execute. She too was a strategist, quietly cutting her ingredients with a worn out steak knife and sawing away at chicken pieces to make bite-sized portions.
She always chose to use a whole chicken as her logic made sense, a whole chicken is cheaper than buying a few pieces of breast, leg and thigh meat. She could just clean it up herself. This process of babying the meat seems important to her as she took the time to pull back the unwanted skin, break through the joints and wash and pat dry the flesh. She kept the bones as it imparted flavour but it also meant that you waste less meat as cutting away flesh from bone can be quite tedious.
She preferred to slice onions whereas I like to chop mine finely. She chopped finely her ginger and garlic while I preferred to crush mine into a paste. She always had more garlic than ginger - garlic outnumbering ginger 2:1. Her heat was now on and the wobbly cast iron karahi was propped on the burner. It sat gracefully on the electric coil, kind hitched to the side as if it were striking a pose on this heated cat-walk. And so it should stay until the process is over and it's empty vessel is entirely full of her mystic concoction that is the Curry.
The process was methodical. The oils warming slowly, the sizzling of onions and the toasting of garlic and ginger. The cupboard opens and her array of spice began to fall down like puffs of snow, with electric yellows, dusty reds, earthy browns and greens. An aroma that with every loving spoonful grew more intoxicating and nourishing.
And with that comes the last Flavour Fundamental...
7) The Love: Combining your choices, the cutting, how much of each herb, spices and aromatics as the tumble into that crazy pot is all given the time it needs to become happy, jolly, and merry. It's the love that a mother, an uncle or a grandparent pours into each step, mastering each fundamental with experience, grace and wisdom.
It is the love that you taste, it is the caring hands and the heart felt dreams of success, happiness and strength that is in every steaming bowl of curry. It is the high notes of salty, smokey, savoury, goodness and undertones of sweet, tangy and hearty. A generation goes and the recipes find their way to the present.
Written by hand, but not on paper...On hearts...
What an evolution it is, a curry.
xo,
The Girl Who Likes to Cook
