Looking beyond curry to kootus and kormas
Curry has become a catchall word for any Indian meat, vegetable or legume dish in a sauce. But that’s a distortion. In fact, it’s plain wrong.
It is not a monolithic dish. Nor does it fall in the predefined or standard category. It can be saucy or bone-dry. It can be sassy and fiery hot or heady with cardamom and cinnamon or mild when seasoned with only salt and pepper.
All that comes through clearly in
“Vegetarian Flavors With Alamelu” (Hippocrene Books; November 2020) by Alamelu Vairavan.
“Curry is a generic term used in the context of Indian dishes,” the cookbook author and PBS TV host says. “But not all Indian dishes should be labeled as curries.”
To me, a curry always has a specific context and doubles down on flavor.
So when someone makes a blanket statement of either loving or hating curry, it leaves me
befuddled as to which curry the person is referring to. Is it the creamy Mughlai- style chicken with almonds and raisins, or is it the dry pepper chicken fry? Is it the tomato sauce- based egg curry or the drier egg curry with green bell peppers and garam masala? Is it the stir- fried carrot curry flecked with mustard seeds and lentils or the sauteed green beans seasoned with cumin seeds and garnished with coconut? Or is it the korma, vindaloo or gosht?
It is akin to saying, “I love” or “I hate” flatbread. The context gets lost if the flatbread is not specified as to whether it is a tortilla, naan, lavash, pita or roti.
The word, whose roots can be traced to Southern India, has traveled far and wide, turning up in Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Kenya, South Africa and the Caribbean. During the colonization of India, the British appropriated curry from the Tamil word kari, which means a dry vegetable dish or meat in a sauce flavored with spices. It also could have been a reference to the curry leaf, which comes from the murraya koenigii plant and is used as a flavor enhancer.
But that seems to have gotten lost in translation.
In some instances, even when meat, vegetable and legume dishes have been given names they are designated as curries simply because of their origin. So names like chana masala (chickpeas with spices), keema ( spiced ground meat) and sodhi (vegetables cooked in coconut milk with spices and chilies) simply fall by the wayside.
Ms. Vairavan showcases why specific names matter when a cuisine offers a wide variety of choices like kootu, korma and poriyal in this, her seventh cookbook.
The lentil-based sauce is what defines the homey kootu. Masoor dal (red lentils) or moong dal (split yellow lentils) are cooked and then combined with vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower and green beans.
Perfumed with cinnamon, fennel seeds, garlic and ginger, a lot more ingredients go into kormas. The author calls for almonds or cashews to be blended with unsweetened coconut and added to vegetables like potatoes and mushrooms.
Poriyal is basically any stir-fried vegetable cooked with a small amount of oil. Her kale, cabbage and sweet potato poriyals all are tossed with unsweetened shredded coconut just before the heat is turned off.
When it is one of her creations, the vegetable gets no suffix and is called by what it features. Asparagus with shallots and garlic is flavored with chutney powder and shredded coconut. Black- eyed peas masala is cooked with mustard seeds, urad dal (white lentils) and sambhar powder.
Ms. Vairavan was born in Chettinad, a region in Southern India known for its piquant cuisine. When she moved to Milwaukee after getting married, she didn’t know a thing about cooking. So she went to stay with her aunt and uncle in New York to learn the basics like cutting vegetables and cooking rice from their cook, Natesan, who also hailed from Chettinad.
One of his key instructions was about seasoning dishes with mustard seeds and urad dal. The oil had to be hot but not smoking hot before they were added. And it is a line she repeats throughout the book.
Her recipes are easy to follow and short, and she did it to erase another distortion.
“Indian cooking is not all laborious or difficult,” she says.