Spice it up
ADD SOME WARMTH TO WINTER DINING
WITH A TRADITIONAL CURRY
Think classic winter fare and it is hard to go past Indian curry with its exotic colours, heady aromas and feisty flavours of spices such as cardamom, garam masala, cumin, cloves, mustard seeds and turmeric.
Curry is a favourite around the world and has a complex history. Ragini Dey from Dhaba at the Spice Kitchen, at Leabrook, voted best Indian restaurant in this year’s Restaurant and Catering Awards, says curry is largely a British invention.
Curry, as we know it in the western world, was actually invented during the Raj era when Britain colonised India. The Brits developed a fondness for Indian cuisine and took a powdered blend of spices home to use in their cooking and these stews evolved into the Anglicised dish of “curry”.
“People lump all Indian dishes into this one category of curry with a yellow gravy into which you put chicken, or pork or beef and the main ingredient is the only thing that changes, not the yellow saucy goo,” Ragini says.
“Different spices and different combinations of those spices are what makes curry…real Indian food has no place for a ubiquitous curry powder.”
While Ragini champions authenticity, she is also unafraid to introduce modern influences to her menus.
“Curry is not just a dish you can make completely out of the blue, it’s all steeped in tradition, but you can take elements of the dish and do things in a modern way,” she says.
“Everything evolves, Indian food is not the same as it was 500 years ago, so as long as I am not professing to rigidly recreate a particular recipe then I can chop and change a bit to suit today’s culture.
“I don’t completely break with tradition but can take that tradition into another dimension…there are so many new ingredients being used all the time, you can’t just go around with your eyes closed to new things.”
Ragini, whose restaurant turns 21 this year, shares the secrets of Indian food at her popular cooking classes held on the last Wednesday of each month.
Bishnu Kharel, chef and co-owner of The Village restaurant in Gouger St, agrees there’s more to Indian food than the clichéd hot curry.
“People think Indian cuisine is just hot vindaloo but it is far more diverse and curry is not necessarily hot either, depending where it’s from,” he says.
“It’s different spices from different regions, different everything, and we want to show all that difference here because I think it’s too limiting to just serve the same curries all the time as some places do.”
Bishnu worked for five years at the five-star Le Meridien Hotel, in Delhi, before coming to Australia where he cooked at the now-defunct Indian Brasserie, also in Gouger St.
He has teamed up with friend Manoj Kundrapu to open The Village with a menu which showcases dishes from various regions such as Lucknow, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Bengal, Kashmir and Punjab.
“Most people have either never seen some of these dishes or they have tasted them on travels and come here to experience what they had in India,” Bishnu says. “A couple were here recently who’d loved Goan fish curry in India and were very happy with my version.”
He says it’s never too early for curry – it even appears on The Village’s popular breakfast menu.
www.spicekitchen.com.au
www.thevillagerestaurant.com.au
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