The Content Reader

This is a post for Paris in July . Paris and Curry? Surely a marriage made in heaven? I have just posted a blog about my latest, tasty (yes) book; Curry - A Global History by Colleen Taylor Sen (you can read the review  here ). The book tells about the relationship between curry and different regions and countries in the world. As we all know it is really a big dish in Britain, but it has conquered quite a lot of other places as well. In fact, the whole world. It is the most famous dish in the world. So, the big question is; what about Paris? Did she take the dish to her heart? Let's see what Taylor Sen has to say about it: It seems the French were less accepting of the food from their colonies as was the British and the Dutch. One reason could be that France's own cuisine has a long, and strong position. Today it is difficult to find any traces in French food of their long association with India, which lasted until 1954. The first Indian restaurant was not opened until...

I am a curry fan so this was really a book for me. I found it in a museum in connection with an exhibition about India. The only problem when you read books like this is that you tend to get very hungry! It is a lovely little book on the history of curry. But, what is curry really? It means a lot of different things for different people. In the book they define it in the following way: "a curry is a spiced meat, fish or vegetable stew served with rice, bread, cornmeal or another starch. The spices may be freshly prepared as a powder or a spice paste or purchased as a ready-made mixture. A secondary definition of curry is any dish, wet or dry, flavoured with curry powder - a ready-made mixture that generally includes turmeric, cumin seed, coriander seed, chillies and fenugreek (and may or may not include curry leaf, Murraya koenigji, a fragrant leaf widely used in southern Indian cooking). This category encompasses such diverse, hybrid dished as German currywurst, Singapore no...