Curry is sooooooooo commonly enjoyed around world. You can find it in an Izakaya(snack drinking bar) in Tokyo, in a top graded Indian restaurant in London, or otherwise in a village hut in remote Thai.
The origin of curry is a collective name of dishes that are cooked with certain spices, and various other ingredient. In Tamil language (used in Indian regions), kari, as the origin of the word curry, meaning sauce of some food cooked with spices, that are normally yellow, red or orange, and usually spicy or hot.
There are not many restrictions of which kinds of spices used in curry, therefore basically every family’s curry recipe in India is different.
Here I list some cardinal spices making up curry(as commonly known)
Pepper, as the spice giving spicy flavour and pungency to curry
cinnamon, although cinnamon is widely used in european cookeries, e.g cakes coffee, bread etc. it is the bark of cinnamon tree (cinnamomun genus), the alternative of cinnamon is chinese cassia, as it gives slightly smoothier taste.
Turmeric, turmeric is a wonderful spice, that gives the yellow colour to curry, it smells(tastes) flavoured, spicy but not yet harsh, like a mixture of pepper, mandarin and musk. It is not expensive, and somehow called the “saffron of the poor”, as saffron was once priced as much as the equally weighted gold hundreds years ago.
Cumin, this spice is widely used in Indian, middle-eastern, Chinese and Mexican dishes, especially for giving a thick feeling to grilled meat.
Cardamom, cardamom is one of the oldest spices used by human. Indians have been using it for a very long time. It is not only used in curry as cardinal spice, also in rices and some other dishes. It helps with digestion, and it is also an ingredient of some perfumes.
Coriander seed, this spice is originally found in Mediterraneans regions, and spread around the world by the Romans. Matured coriander seed smells spicy and bit of hot, there is also some smell of orange skin and the woody smell.
The final one of seven cardinal spices is bay leaf. It is the dried leaf of Bay tree (Laurus nobilis), but one of the species in its family is poisonous. It is the ingredient of many European/Asian food, even the white sauce sometimes. It has a light, refreshing smell.
However, normally a curry recipe would contain much more kinds of spices than just seven.
Some other spices used in curry are,
the important ones(but not necessarily essential) are
curry leaf
clove
fennel seed
Ginger or galangal
Chilli, yes the spicy-lover would never resist it
Mace
Sometimes, when I mix my own recipe, i would add slight amount of some other spices, to make it more personalised and characterised. Some spices like garlic, allspice and mustard would be nice, since I can bear quite some hot flavour. Also, if possible, slight amount of ajowan and poppy would be nice. They have strong and excellent flavours. But poppy is hard to fetch, and more than a certain amount it’s addictive.
That the basic about curry, as much more is to be discovered. but lol try to make your own curry!
