I watched this TV show about curry. The usual sort of glutton who fancies himself a gourmet fronted-up as presenter and his ongoing theme was the apparently perplexing question of what the word “curry” really means; which is about as banal as asking what “stew” means, but I suppose if you nag on about something bleeding-obvious for long enough viewers will hang around just to see if there is some answer, that you hadn’t thought of immediately, likely to emerge.
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The galloping gourmand asked everyone in India: old Nanis and ancient Parnanis, young spivvy chefs, café owners, Bollywood wannabes and even (on their curry-breaks) those blokes who trundle eternally upwards on the water-wheels.
And the startling conclusion? Curry, it would seem, means “gravy”. Now I ask you, could there be a blander, wronger definition of anything in the world? It’s like translating joie de vie as “I’m orright”.
The problem was that our BBC chappie was talking to quite intelligent Indian people who were taking his words literally (what does the “word” mean, rather than the nature of its being).
Of course it has a sauce – or a “gravy, if you like – that provides the flavour; they probably figured that this little bloke was a simpleton who had never tasted one before, and needed the gentlest answer available.
“Gravy,” I yelled at the buffoon as he summed up his findings, “is poured onto the meal. In a curry, everything is cooked together so that the flavours are infused.”
My wife came in to ask if I was talking to the television again (I just mumbled that, no, it was just a wrong number calling on the phone) so I had no opportunity to add that, in said infusion, there needed to be both herbal aroma and at least a tinge of palate warmth to qualify as a curry.
I decided there and then that my only sensible recourse was to open a restaurant as soon as possible.
If aging BBC boffins can earn a quid by taking a camera crew to Calcutta, guzzle some food, and come home with the startling news that curry means gravy, then I could make a motza selling esoteric culinary tat to toothsome sentimentalists in Wagga.
My nosh-shop (I’m thinking the Old Mill building) will have a small (we’ll call it “elite”) menu of hard-to-find delights: prawn cocktails, chicken-in-a-basket, Devon sandwiches with Three-3’s pickles, and – for dessert – meringues; “toast” (yet to be defined) and/or boiled eggs will be available when in season.
Our mantra will be that everything is sourced locally – I’m thinking Coles and Woolies – and we hope to come to some arrangement with the Men’s Shed blokes for the baskets for the chicken.
Yes, that’s a slim menu but that’s the whole idea – where, these days, can you get a genuine prawn cocktail with a sauce defying not only the taste buds but DNA analysis?
And, more to the point, what does the word “cocktail” mean in reference to some tinned prawns and lettuce? I can see a whole season of BBC television investigating that conundrum.
As for the devon meat sandwiches, I would expect many mothers to use our online home service to get these bulk-packed for school lunches, picnics and funeral receptions – guaranteeing a wholesale trade.
These were the only sandwiches that I ever ate as a child and their cultural demise in these many years is something that has puzzled me immensely.
I’m not just going to shake up the local food scene, I’m gonna give ‘em curry.
