Where Curries Come From
My daughter surprised me last week by asking me where curries come from. She’s only six and previously hasn’t shown any interest in curries. I replied that curries come from the Indian restaurant at the end of the street. But what she really wanted to know was from which country curries came.
That was an interesting question with multiple answers.
The most obvious answer is that curries come from India.
But that’s not the full story.
In fact, curries come from lots of different countries, the most famous (in my mind) being India. But curries also come from lots of countries including Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Japan and even Jamaica. Each country has its own styles of curries.
Each country produces at least one type of curry and some, such as India, have lots of different types of dishes to tempt your palate.
What ingredients are put into curries? Well, almost anything edible. The main ingredients are chillies, spices, onions, ginger, meat (including fish) and vegetables. Rice is usually served with a curry.
Today you can get a curry in almost every country in the world. Indeed, there is usually a choice of types of curry in most big cities around the world.
I’m not sure that my answer meant much to my daughter but we had fun finding all of the curry countries in an atlas.
