Chicken Tikka Masala and Other Chimeras

[steepholm]

It's sometimes said that cricket is an Indian game that happened to be invented in England. I suppose that makes chicken tikka masala cricket's gastronomic equivalent, although I doubt Hambledon CC will thank me for saying it.

What I hadn't realized until today was that vindaloo was originally a Portugese wine and garlic sauce (vin d'alho), before being spiced up by the inhabitants of Goa. At least, I suppose that's the case since the OED tells me so, but Indian food origins seem quite prone to mythologizing. Chicken tikka masala itself is not without its controversies, and then there's the case of jalfrezi, which I've blithely told people for years derives from the name of an officer of the Raj called Colonel Frazer - because that's what it says on the labels of Geeta's Spice and Stir. However, the same label claims that "jhal frezi" means "dry fry". Can both be true? It was apparently popular as a cooking method (rather than as a dish) in Anglo-Indian households, so maybe there really was a Colonel Frazer who took a particular liking to it - and maybe he or his friends saw the opportunity for a bilingual pun?

Or maybe Geeta Samtani is having a joke.

If indeed she really exists.

I hardly dare mention that I've always understood chutney to have been the miraculous offspring of British preserving techniques and Indian ingredients - and that if one needed an excuse for the Empire one need look no further than my cousin Dave's recipe, or failing that Mrs Ball's more widely available South African version. But I dare say that will turn out not to be true either, and that the whole imperial adventure was built on sand.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Then there's always that great British, or Brummie to be precise, invention, the balti! :o)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should save that for a post on foods named after things they are cooked in.

[jadelennox]

OM NOM NOM balti. I've been working on trying to make my own but they aren't their yet.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

I commend to you Lizzie Collingham's Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. It's a marvellous, rambling history of Indian food and the British relationship with the same. It's full of delightful nuggets of information, delivered in passing, that could easily be developed into books in their own right.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That does look interesting - thank you!

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

She does a great job of demolishing the whole, ridiculous notion of authenticity. (We once travelled with Brits who got their knickers in a twist about whether the food they were eating was 'authentic' - well it was grown, cooked and served in India by Indians...)

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Well, welcome to http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/creator-q-a-the-feasts-of-tre-mang

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've already booked my next holiday on Tre-mang.

[gair.livejournal.com]

Also, there has been curry in the UK for as long as there has been fish and chips (C19 Jewish 'import').

I am not sure if this is true but I like it, so I treat it as if it were true.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

What else are assertions for? Love them, and they will grow into facts.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Brits had a reputation for liking their food highly spiced even in the Middle Ages- it seems the blandfest of the late 19th to mid 20th centuries was an oddity. :o)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I might have mentioned in my post the "phal" curry, another British invention which (like the shirtless Geordie) seems designed purely for the purposes of machismo, the word deriving (so Wiki suggests) from "phallus".

Away from the subcontinent, there's this stall, which has recently appeared in the covered market in Bristol. It exercises a grim fascination, and I admit to having watched some of their tasting sessions on Youtube.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

While I'll admit to a liking for a good hot sauce, I like to taste the individual spices that make up that sauce. Heat for its own sake always strikes me as pretty pointless.

My own likings in subcontinent based cuisine tend towards rogan josh and dansakh