By K D L Khan
Curry belongs to Indian cuisine and our gourmets state that there are nearly 200 authentic curries in India ranging from the Chettinad chicken curry of South India to the Yakhni mutton curry of Kashmir.

In the last sixty years, curry has become truly globalised and there are internationally hundreds of varieties of curries modified by different nations. Some form of curry can be found in kitchens all around the world - be it the curry goat in the Caribbean; the cape curry in South Africa; the curry shrimp and curry chicken in Trinidad and Tobago; the Kare-Kare in the Philippines; Fiji’s Kare; Samoa and Tonga’s Polynesian curry and the more familiar Malaysian, Thai, Indonesian curries. All of these are influenced by Indian spices.
For example Japan has a museum for Curry in the city of Yokohama! India, the land of the curry does not have one nor does Britain home to more than ten thousand Indian restaurants! But the lads from Nippon have done it!  Japan had been introduced to curry when British ships docked at Yokohama with Indian sailors during the Meiji era (1869 - 1913). It was the time when India was under the British and hence, curry in Japan, was categorised as a western dish instead of an Asian delicacy. It was almost a century before the Japanese  caught on to the curry  that is the 1970s when they found that it was much easier to make a curry-based menu than any other type of Japanese food namely from a ready-made curry sauce mix in under an hour! Today the Japanese curry is commonly served in three main forms: curry rice, karē udon (thick noodles) and karē-pan (bread). It is usually thicker, sweeter and milder than its Indian equivalent. Most Japanese households make curry using processed curry cubes, an industry that sells today more than 100000 (yes! one hundred thousand tons) of instant curry preparations worth 700 million US dollars or 2800 crore rupees! The All Japan Curry Manufacturers Association   has more in its budget than that of the Indian Curry Powder Exporters, who exported only 10400 tonnes worldwide in 2009 valued at a meagre 150 crore rupees! In fact in 2006, one Japanese entrepreneur wanted to patent the curry. What is even more mind boggling is that the Curry museum managers claim to offer over 800 different types of instant curries to visitors.
The currywurst of Germany is a fast-food curry dish of German origin consisting of hot pork sausage (German: wurst) cut into slices and seasoned with curry sauce and generous amounts of curry powder. The invention of currywurst is attributed to Herta Heuwer in Berlin in 1949 after she obtained ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and curry powder from British soldiers. She mixed these ingredients with other spices and poured it over grilled pork sausage. An estimated 800 million currywurst servings are sold in Germany every year. The Deutsches Currywurst Museum opened in Berlin on August 15, 2009, commemorating the 60th anniversary of its creation. Curator Martin Loewer said, “No other national German dish inspires so much history and has so many well-known fans.”
But it is in Britain that we find the curry ruling the cuisine world. It is also a cuisine that is a serious industry by itself. The Curry Magazine is a periodical publication published by The Curry Club, England and is the world’s only consumer magazine exclusively devoted to the subject of curry and the ‘curry lands’. Curry Magazines are collectables and back numbers have been known to sell at auction for surprising sums. There is an annual 10-day Taste of Britain’s Curry Festival.
The typical English curry is, however, quite different from the Indian or Bangladeshi version. It has to be flavourful and soft on the British palate. Spices like garam masala, cumin, ginger, garlic and bay leaves are used sparingly and only olive oil is used. Second, continental herbs like rosemary, chives, taragon and parsley are also added.   Whether it is mild, thick, creamy or dry, the base is sweetened tomato. It is cooked in a cast iron pot without being sautéed for long as curries are customarily cooked in India. In January 2010, we had a group of British Chefs holding demonstrations of the 50 versions of British curry in all major metropolis of India.
The curry houses of Paris are few and far between as the different French immigration patterns mean that North African couscous emporiums outnumber South Asian curry restaurants by 50 to 1. But it is difficult to quantify the popularity of Indian cuisine in the United States because there is scant hard data that objectively shows where it stands next to other ethnic foods. Yet, if the number of Indian restaurants in this country is any indicator (more than 10,000, according to a 2003 study conducted by University of North Texas) then Americans are warming up to Indian food. Yet mainstream America’s tastes are very different from that of NRI Indians and most Americans would probably find the cuisine served in the subcontinent too spicy or sweet. “The flavour that most Americans identify with curry is an ingredient that isn’t even used in most Indian curry recipes: Curry powder. While many think of curry as a single dish it’s really more of a cooking style,” says Vijay Anand, executive chef, Patak’s Foods, USA. Most American cooks don’t realise that curry can be flavoured to an individual’s liking.
The Indian curry restaurants in Italy are not as well developed as in say, England.  There Indian restaurants are expensive, presented as rare, exotic upmarket haunts for rare and exotic clientele. Italians think that having a curry is frightfully daring and by and large cannot handle really hot curry, so the cheap and cheerful, simple curry and vindaloo meals so familiar in England are not as easily found in Rome.
Theses have been written in the western universities about curry addiction. Several studies claim that “the reaction of pain receptors to the hotter ingredients in curries leads to the body’s release of endorphins and combined with the complex sensory reaction to the variety of spices and flavours a natural high is achieved that causes subsequent cravings, often followed by a desire to move on to hotter curries.”  Truly as The New York Times has voted curry is one of the planet’s most internationalised foods; right up there with the pizza. (MF)