Facts

India is a wide country, therefore it is not surprising that some regions developed there own special dishes. The food from India reflects the origin from its nation. By this way it embraces historical progress, religious belief and cultural practice. India it self has been affected by other countries and captivating different aspects from their food culture. What is equal in this food culture is that herbs and spices together create dishes which are full of taste, perplex and may cause an addiction. The recipes are spread from one generation to another and is often told by mouth and not written down.

One example: Curry (the word kaari from Tamil) simply means sauce with extra ingredients like meat, chicken, fish or all kinds of vegetables. Even if the first curry powder was discovered in Madras early during the 19th century it was mainly intended for export to the United Kingdom.

Indians prefer to combine their own herbs and spices. The mixture, that might be moisture or dry, is called masala and is made fresh everyday when the menu is set. It is the mixture of all kinds of masala that is the real magic behind the art of cooking. Even a simple potato can be transformed into many different ways, depending on the mixture of masala.

Curry 

Curry is a mixture of many different kinds of spices, for example cayenne, ginger, coriander, cumin, black pepper, cardamom, cloves and turmeric (that gives the curry its yellow colour). The taste is mild and aromatic and it goes along with rice, vegetables, chicken, lamb and sauces. Furthermore there are also different kinds of curry, for example Oriental curry and green Thai curry. In Sri Lanka the mixture is not called by singular but in plural and its name is then curries. The English expression curry means a dish containing curry and the Indian word means a sauce containing yoghurt, flour, fat and chick-pea flour.

Ingefära

Ginger is an old cultivated plant that has been grown thousands of years in India and China. It is growing wild in the rainforest of Asia. The plant lives many years and can reach a height of 1,5 m with sprout of flowers and herbs. The sprouts of flower are only 15-20 cm and carry almost 20 green yellow and purple flowers. The trunks are eatable, they are strong and one can clearly see the scars from the sprouts.

On the outside of the ginger the colour is light brown and on the inside the colour is light yellow and green. The trunk of the ginger contains ethereal oil with a sharp taste. Dried ginger can be used as a spice but raw ginger has a fresher taste.

In middle-age cooking ginger was one of the most important spices and appreciated because of the antiseptic qualities. Today we use ginger as naturopathic medicine when treatment is needed for the stomach, infections in bone and muscles and to cure motion sickness.

Anis

Anise is a spice with sharp, sweet taste of liquorice and its used in bread and sometimes even in curry mixtures. Wild anise is growing in the region of east Mediterranean while grown anise occurs in most countries with fairly mild weather. The plant lives one year and it has round heart shaped leaves. The flowers are white and spared in groups. The fruit are aromatic and consists of two firmly joined parts of fruits and has the shape of an egg. The colour of the fruit is grey green and has short hair on the side.

Chili

Chili is the umbrella term for Spanish pepper, Pepperoni, Jalapeño, Habanera and many other spicy fruits which belong to the “Capsicum”-family. Chilli is not only a hot spice, the fresh chilli contains vitamin A and twice the amount vitamin C than other citrus.