Let Them Eat Curry!

This blog is supposed to be about cultural learnings, right? How about if I start with one or two cultural observations here in the U.S. of A that relate to India? Oh, and it'll be about my favorite subject: food!

So a foreign guy walks into a bar in Memphis (sounds like a bad joke, I know, but this could actually happen. Just give it a minute). Let's call him Mohammed, because it's the most common name in the world, don't you know? He makes friends with a personable character (Bud, since I'm sticking with the common names, and he's such a friendly guy anyway) and they exchange contact information. Mohammed to have already made an acquaintance.

The next day, Mohammed receives a call; it's the bar fellow, inviting him over that night for dinner. "I thought you might enjoy some authentic Memphis barbecue."

Mohammed: "What's barbecue?"

Bud: "Barbecue? Why, that's when you go to a barbecue, take a piece of barbecue, put some barbecue rub on it, thrown it on the barbecue and eat it with a side of barbecue sauce."

Mohammed: "Um... I've got plans."

Bear with me folks, it's just a hypothetical. I'm trying to show how when it comes to food, there's a lot behind simply what's for dinner. In this case, Bud has just clearly illustrated the immense diversity of the word barbecue. Originating from the Amerindian boucan, referring to the way in which meats were smoked over hot coals, Columbus and the Spaniards changed it to barbacoa, and we use a similar word today in many different ways. It can be the action of cooking meat over hot coals in a particular style, the meat itself, a blend of spices, a flavorful sauce, or even the down-south, outdoor, hootinanny get-together of a bunch of fire-loving carnivores, hell-bent on grilling as much animal flesh as they can get their hands on.

What does this have to do with India? Curry, of course. It's kinda the same thing. In Indian cuisine, curry is a section of the menu, a type of dish, a single spice, a blend of spices, a sauce, or a particular way of cooking foods. How do I know this, a week before I actually depart for India? Wikipedia, my friends. It rocks, and we would be lost without it. Oh, and Sindu's Indian Cuisine in East Lansing is pretty awesome too.

Why do simple words regarding food have such varied meanings? Cultural anthropologists the world around are scratching their collective heads, I'm sure, but I have a theory: food is simple, yet complex. Every little detail matters. Therefore, after a few thousand years of holding chunks of meat over an old fire until it's delicious, humanity has come up with millions, billions of different ways to cook a relatively small variety of food. Try counting all the different ways you can cook a chicken.

Let me prove my point by giving you my recipe to cook any food, anytime, anywhere.
Step 1: Gather food.
Step 2: Prepare food.
Step 3: Heat it until it's done.

But... What animal? What vegetable? What part? Where do I find it? What kind of heat? How long? What other ingredients? How will I know if it's done? What food goes well with other food? How do I keep it fresh? What other foods go well with it? Most importantly, what's for dessert?

If you can answer those questions for a particular region, say for Northern India, congratulations, you have just unlocked the secrets to that region's cuisine, and a big part of that region's culture. That, my friends, is one of the things about which I'm most excited in the coming months. In other words, I'm not Curry Kid yet, but I sure hope to be.