Curry leaves (Murraya koenigii Spreng.)

Flowering wild curry tree

Curry tree with fruits © Liz Thomas

Curry leaves are extensively used in Southern India and Sri Lanka (and are absolutely necessary for the authentic flavour), but are also of some impor­tance in Northern India. Together with South Indian immigrants, curry leaves reached Malaysia, South Africa and Réunion island. Outside the Indian sphere of influence, they are rarely found.

Curry tree with fruits © Liz Thomas

Curry pow­der is a British in­ven­tion to im­itate the flavour of Indian cooking with minimal effort. Some curry pow­ders, or so the books tell, in­deed con­tain curry leaves, but pro­bably only for histo­ric or lin­guistic reasons, since dried curry leaves lose their fragrance within days. A typical curry powder should derive its taste mainly from toasted cumin, toasted coriander, black pepper, chiles and toasted fenu­greek. Other typical Indian spices often contained in curry powders are dried ginger, ajwain and celery (as a sub­stitute for Indian radhuni), further­more salt, flour from lightly toasted lentils and aromatic Moghul spices in variable amounts (cinnamon, cloves, green cardamom, Indian bay-leaves). The yellow colour stems from turmeric. I think it’s pretty unreasonable to put spices with absolutely no tradition in India into a spice blend that claims to have an Indian flavour, but nevertheless galangale, caraway, allspice, and zedoary are occasionally listed as ingredients in curry powders. Remember that since curry powder is not a traditional recipe, there is little consensus about what should go into it, and anyone is free to sell his own creation.

Curry tree flower

Curry tree in full flower © Liz Thomas

Observant readers will notice that the recipe for curry powder out­lined in the previous para­graph appears like a com­pro­mise of the Northern Indian garam masala and the Southern Indian sambar podi (see cumin and coriander, re­spec­tively). Anyway, you cannot represent the large spectrum of Indian cooking styles in one single spice mixture; Indians prepare their mixtures separately for each dish and usually do not store them, thus guaran­teeing the unique flavour of each recipe. Curry powder, therefore, belongs more to British or inter­national cuisine than to India; anyone trying to cook authentic Indian recipes should stick to traditional Indian spice mixtures or, even better, single spices. Western-style curry powder has been introduced to some Far Eastern countries in the past, and today plays but a minor rôle as a flavouring in China, Indonesia and, above all, Vietnam.

Curry tree in full flower © Liz Thomas

Unripe curry fruits

While there is no curry powder in India, Sri Lanka has a common spice mix some­what similarto the Western pro­duct, though i lacks turmeric and is therefore of brown colour. The blend is refer­red to as curry powder in Sri Lankan English, as tunapaha kudu [තුනපහ කුඩු] in Sinhala and as karittul [கறித்தூள்] or masala tul [மசால தூள்]) in Tamil language. A version with maximum degree of toasting is known as baedapu tunapaha kudu [බැදපු තුනපහ කුඩු] or varutta karittul [வறுத்த கறித்தூள்] roasted curry powder and contains also some toasted rice grains as an additional source of roast flavour. In any case, Sri Lankan curry powder consists of various spices like cumin, coriander, fennel, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper and chiles which have been toasted prior to grinding; these powders do contain turmeric, but not enough to reach the same bright yellow colour as a typical Western curry powder. Also, the toasted legume component is absent from Sri Lankan curry powder. This blend has been introduced to the Caribbean where it is known as Colombo powder or Poudre de Colombo. All these powders may contain small amounts of curry leaves (less likely in the Caribbean), but the taste will be dominated by the other spices.

Fruit-bearing Curry Tree (growing wild in Nepal)

Curry tree flowers

Unripe curry fruits

In Indian cuisines, curry leaves are used fresh. They develop their flavour best after a short heating; thus, they are often fried in butter or oil as a part of the spice mix that marks the beginning of a preparation and gives a unique flavour to the food (baghar, see onion); in South India, they are often employed in tarka-like preparation that flavour foods after cooking and just before serving (see ajwain). Since South Indian cuisine is dominantly vegetarian, curry leaves seldom appear in non-vegetarian food; the main applications are thin lentil or vegetable curries (sambaar [சாம்பார்]), the typically South Indian dry curries, which consist just of vegetable pieces sautéed with spices, and also in some rice dishes like bisi bele (see coconut). In the North, they are mostly found in the stuffings for the crispy samosa [समोसा]. Because of their soft texture, they are never removed before serving, but can be eaten without any hazard.

Curry tree flowers

Although cur­ry leaves real­ly must be fresh, they can be dried in a hot pan or deep-fried in fat im­media­tely be­fore usage; then, they will not only retain their fra­grance and dark green colour, but also ac­quire a very pleasant, crispy tex­ture. I’ll never forget a South Indian beef fry which was pre­pared by Muslim cooks in Kar­nataka: Lean beef cubes were mari­nated with joghurt and a spice mix quite similar to the blends used for North Indian tandoori foods; then, they were deep-fried and mixed with crispy curry leaves. This type of usage is, however, mostly found in Sri Lanka, for example in the national rice dish buriyani [බුරියානි], a mild rice flavoured with turmeric and other spices and usually served with chicken pieces. Hot-dried or deep-fried curry leavs can also be ground to a fragrant powder and may appear in spice blends, but their fragrance will not last very long.

In Sri Lanka, the delicious chicken and beef curries are flavoured with curry leaves; the leaves are further­more used for kottu roti [කොත්තු රොටී], vegetables and sliced bread which are quickly fried together. Sri Lankan cooking is very hot and pungent due to almost excessive use of chiles, but also very aromatic. Compared to Indians, Sri Lankans eat more meats and less dairy products; meats and vegetables are often cooked in gravies based on water or thin coconut milk instead of yoghurt.

Curry tree sapling

Flowering curry tree

The typical Sri Lankan flavour is due to heavy toasting some spices (cumin, coriander, black mustard, fenu­greek) until they reach a rather dark colour; it is often said that Sri Lankan curries have a darker or browner flavour than Indian curries. Sri Lankan cooks often use aromatic spices native to the island (cinnamon, cardamom) and fresh leaves (curry leaves, Pandanus leaves and lemon grass; the latter two are not in common use in India).

Curry leaves may be kept in the refrigerator for some time, but are better kept frozen; do not tear them from their stems before usage!

The term curry is ap­plied in­flatio­nari­ly to many dishes of Far Eastern ori­gin. As shown above, in its true home South India it means a thin, spicy veg­etable stew. In Thai­land, though, any food cooked in coco­nut milk is called a curry (gaeng [แกง]); the term is simi­larly used in Viet­nam, where cur­ries (ca ri [ca ri], see rice paddy herb) are in­deed often fla­voured with Anglo–Indian curry powder. Laksa, a soupy noodle dish from Malaysia and Singa­pore, is often referred to as curried noodles or the like, probably, because it contains coconut and derives the familiar yellow colour from turmeric (see Viet­namese coriander for details about laksa).

Flowering curry tree

In Burma, how­ever, a com­plete­ly dif­ferent de­fini­tion of curry is in use: Bur­mese curries owe their fla­vour to a fried paste of ground onions and other spices (see onion for details). Lastly, in Indo­nesia, any spicy food may be termed a curry (kari in Indo­nesian). Some­times, one even hears about Ethiopian (see long pepper) or Caribbean curries, whatever this may mean (except, perhaps, the least common denomi­nator of all those: Spiciness).