The world is one big melting curry pot!

When I was a graduate student, a professor, Hugh Evans, invited a few students--all of us foreigners--to his home for a meal. Hugh was an immigrant himself--from Wales.

(Once I made a big time error, when during some casual chat during a break as the class was getting coffee and snacks, I told a fellow graduate student that Hugh was English.  He pretended to get mad that I erred about English versus Welsh!)

Anyway, his wife was also an immigrant--from Japan. The time we were invited to their place, she had, for whatever reason, taken a break from academe and other than a little bit of consulting here and there, she was mostly home.

We got to talking and it didn't take much for her to know that I was from India.  She excitedly pointed out a dish there--beef curry.  A curry made not because of any international theme, but because, she clarified, making a good curry dish in Japan means that the person knows how to cook.  Making the curry dish from scratch was apparently a mark of expertise.

Now, if they had asked me to guess, I would have ventured that it was Hugh who cooked the curry dish, given the British connections.  It was quite a learning experience that day.

Soon after that, coincidentally, I discovered that a Japanese fast food joint in the LA area--I have forgotten that name--had on its menu a beef curry with white rice. I would never have guessed, way back in India, that curry would have such a vaulted status in Japan.

It was much later in life that I read in a short piece in the NY Times magazine that:

katsu curry dates to the Meiji era of the late 19th century, soon after the opening of Japan’s borders. Japanese trade with the West led to a national fascination with foreign flavors and textures — a kind of reverse-twist culinary version of the Japonisme that gripped Europe around the same time. (There was until recently a curry museum located in Yokohama, one of Japan’s most prominent ports.)

The world has become one big common kitchen.  A few years ago, the chicken tikka masala became the national dish of sorts in the UK, displacing the traditional fish-n-chips as the most ordered item.  Sushi is big time here in America.  There aren't many cities around the world without pizza places.

What a contrast to my grandmother's life!  She ate nothing but the traditional Tamil brahmin food her entire life, and her biggest excitement was with the "English vegetables," and cauliflower in particular.  Now, her grandchildren have an overflowing number of food choices from so many different cultures. 

As one who likes tasty food, and enjoys cooking my own variations, I cannot imagine the dull life that it would have been a couple of centuries ago.  But then, what we don't know doesn't hurt us, eh!

Maybe it is the sheer number of choices that we now have in our everyday life that is making us all stressed out and less happy.  Maybe if porridge is all one knew and had, then that porridge everyday would be something we would have excitedly looked forward to?

Nah!  :)