CURRIES
“Thou com’st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee.”
Different modes of manufacture—The “native” fraud—“That man’s family”—The French kari—A Parsee curry—“The oyster in the sauce”—Ingredients—Malay curry—Locusts—When to serve—What to curry—Prawn curry—Dry curry, a champion recipe—Rice—The Bombay duck.
The poor Indian grinds his coriander seeds, green ginger, and other ingredients between two large flat stones; taking a whiff at the family “hubble-bubble” pipe at intervals. The frugal British housewife purchases (alleged) curry powder in the warehouse of Italy—where it may have lived on, like Claudian, “through the centuries”—stirs a spoonful or two into the hashed mutton, surrounds it with a wall of clammy rice, and calls it Benares Curry, made from the recipe of a very dear uncle who met his death while tiger-shooting. And you will be in the minority if you do not cut this savoury meat with a knife, and eat potatoes, and very often cabbage, with it. The far-seeing eating-house keeper corrals a Lascar or a discharged Mehtar into the firm, gives him his board, a pound a month, and a clean puggaree and Kummerbund daily, and “stars” him in the bill as an “Indian chef, fresh from the Chowringhee Club, Calcutta.” And it is part of the duties of this Oriental—supposed by the unwary to be at least a prince in his native land—to hand the portions of curry, which he may or may not have concocted, to the appreciative guests, who enjoy the repast all the more from having the scent of the Hooghly brought across the footlights. I was once sadly and solemnly reproved by the head waiter of a very “swagger” establishment indeed for sending away, after one little taste, the (alleged) curry which had been handed me by an exile from Ind, in snow-white raiment.
“You really ought to have eaten that, sir,” said the waiter, “for that man’s family have been celebrated curry-makers for generations.”
I smole a broad smile. In the Land of the Moguls the very babies who roll in the dust know the secret of curry-making. But that “that man” had had any hand in the horrible concoction placed before me I still resolutely decline to believe. And how can a man be cook and waiter at the same time? The “native curry-maker,” depend on it, is more or less of a fraud; and his aid is only invoked as an excuse for overcharging.
At the Oriental Club are served, or used to be served, really excellent curries, assorted; for as there be more ways than one of killing a cat, so are there more curries than one. The French turn out a horrible mixture, with parsley and mushrooms in it, which they call kari; it is called by a still worse name on the Boulevards, and the children of our lively neighbours are frequently threatened with it by their nurses.
On the whole, the East Indian method is the best; and the most philanthropic curry I ever tasted was one which my own Khitmughar had just prepared, with infinite pains, for his own consumption. The poor heathen had prospected a feast, as it was one of his numerous “big days”; so, despising the homely dhal, on the which, with a plate of rice and a modicum of rancid butter, he was wont to sustain existence, he had manufactured a savoury mess of pottage, the looks of which gratified me. So, at the risk of starting another Mutiny, it was ordained that the slave should serve the refection at the table of the “protector of the poor.” And a pukkha curry it was, too. Another dish of native manufacture with which the writer became acquainted was a
Parsee Curry.
The eminent firm of Jehangeer on one occasion presented a petition to the commanding-officer that they might be allowed to supply a special curry to the mess one guest-night. The request was probably made as an inducement to some of the young officers to pay a little on account of their “owings” to the firm; but it is to be feared that no special vote of thanks followed the sampling of that special curry. It was a curry! I tasted it for a week (as the Frenchman did the soup of Swindon); and the Parsee chef must have upset the entire contents of the spice-box into it. I never felt more like murder than when the hotel cook in Manchester put nutmeg in the oyster sauce; but after that curry, the strangling of the entire firm of Jehangeer would, in our cantonments, at all events, have been brought in “justifiable homicide.”