Curry in a cold climate
It is a hunched cold, a day of heavy damp and dripping grey. Here, it hangs over wet brown leaves, puddles on the pavements. But I have felt it too in streets turned to mud, with ashy fires by the side mixing smoke into the mist, turning coolies bronchial. I have known it where whole mountain ranges huddle together as fog blanks out whole swathes of landscape and creeps into the crevices. There, I have envied softly-stamping cows the warmth of their calves and beds of straw, my own shawl growing damp with my breath inside it.
But there is a smell that causes me to lift my nose up out of its swaddling and into the cold. Lobia. Rajma. Garlicky beans. And I love it that this smell has followed me all my autumns-turning-to-winters, from Garhwal to the Nilgiris, the Pennines to the Decembers of Delhi and Lahore, the Karakorum to just south of Surrey. I find myself unfurling to breathe it in more deeply and pick up the song of the pressure cooker. Though I cannot see her, I know there to be a wise woman nearby, casting out the cold from her kitchen.
This for me is curry: a platter of spicy mutton being shared by a family, the best beloved closest to the woodstove; the darkest green of sag gosht against a view of snow outside the tin-roof house; coming in from the cold to plates of red-sauce paneer; thawing out after deathly cold church services in the Sher-e-Punjab, where flames flamenco round karahis of dal makhani and kofte.
And this for me is cold: the ice of a valley surrounded by peaks so high and white we feel ourselves to be dust. Into the silence comes a whispered sibilance, that of a paraffin stove, and then the steam and the spice. Someone is warming us up and nourishing us with kichdi. As the sun's fading rays flash a brilliant orange high in the twilit sky I am glad to know we will survive the night.
It was north of the Arctic Circle that curry first entered my family's blood. On the edge of fjords, white as far as the eye could see, my father was custodian of the spices, turmeric's yellow and chilli's red a feast for the eyes in that colour-starved place. In charge of cooking for his research colleagues, he stirred in pinches of curry powder to add heat to tins of luncheon meats and fish. So while chipping away at rocks for geological samples to study back in Oxford's labs, he also found the answer: it works. Since then we have worked with this conclusion and continue to research combinations of spices, herbs, vegetables and tins of fish. And we have found they work in every altitude and latitude we have been at. But in cold places, they flare up with zinging vibrancy and make winter a celebration.
And so it is that when the turkey is in the oven, the bread sauce on the stove and veg on the boil I wonder why Christmas is not spicier. Surely to announce the birth of Christ we could join the angel songs with more dazzle and verve? I know a few things that sparkle: cumin in hot oil, saffron on a bed of rice, fenugreek in the nose and peppercorns and chilli flakes in the mouth. Lift up your voice, those on whom God's favour rests; let your tongue become a flame. The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory!
But there is a smell that causes me to lift my nose up out of its swaddling and into the cold. Lobia. Rajma. Garlicky beans. And I love it that this smell has followed me all my autumns-turning-to-winters, from Garhwal to the Nilgiris, the Pennines to the Decembers of Delhi and Lahore, the Karakorum to just south of Surrey. I find myself unfurling to breathe it in more deeply and pick up the song of the pressure cooker. Though I cannot see her, I know there to be a wise woman nearby, casting out the cold from her kitchen.
This for me is curry: a platter of spicy mutton being shared by a family, the best beloved closest to the woodstove; the darkest green of sag gosht against a view of snow outside the tin-roof house; coming in from the cold to plates of red-sauce paneer; thawing out after deathly cold church services in the Sher-e-Punjab, where flames flamenco round karahis of dal makhani and kofte.
And this for me is cold: the ice of a valley surrounded by peaks so high and white we feel ourselves to be dust. Into the silence comes a whispered sibilance, that of a paraffin stove, and then the steam and the spice. Someone is warming us up and nourishing us with kichdi. As the sun's fading rays flash a brilliant orange high in the twilit sky I am glad to know we will survive the night.
It was north of the Arctic Circle that curry first entered my family's blood. On the edge of fjords, white as far as the eye could see, my father was custodian of the spices, turmeric's yellow and chilli's red a feast for the eyes in that colour-starved place. In charge of cooking for his research colleagues, he stirred in pinches of curry powder to add heat to tins of luncheon meats and fish. So while chipping away at rocks for geological samples to study back in Oxford's labs, he also found the answer: it works. Since then we have worked with this conclusion and continue to research combinations of spices, herbs, vegetables and tins of fish. And we have found they work in every altitude and latitude we have been at. But in cold places, they flare up with zinging vibrancy and make winter a celebration.
And so it is that when the turkey is in the oven, the bread sauce on the stove and veg on the boil I wonder why Christmas is not spicier. Surely to announce the birth of Christ we could join the angel songs with more dazzle and verve? I know a few things that sparkle: cumin in hot oil, saffron on a bed of rice, fenugreek in the nose and peppercorns and chilli flakes in the mouth. Lift up your voice, those on whom God's favour rests; let your tongue become a flame. The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory!
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