BEYOND CURRY

Ideas from Indian kitchens have the potential to elevate world cuisine, says Nobel prize-winning economist Abhijit Banerjee. Illustrations

- Cheyenne Olivier

Brussels, the once-upon-hometown of Cheyenne Olivier, who is my friend and illustrator, is dotted with thousands of friteries. These are shops where you can only buy French fries, along with an option on dozens of dipping sauces. Among them is currysaus, distinguished by the unmistakable hue and fragrance of curry powder.

It is a commonplace that no one in India cooks with curry powder. But on the other hand, the idea of a masala, a blending of a number of contrasting spices, is fundamental to Indian cooking. The problem with curry powder, which it shares with chicken tikka masala and chai, is less the lack of authenticity than the fact that it turns an incredibly rich and diverse culinary landscape into a kind of a Golden Triangle of eating.

It is not surprising that every culinary tradition tries to find the simplest ways to incorporate other traditions into its cooking vocabulary-this is currysaus, currywurst in Germany, katsu curry in Japan (but also gobi 65). What is unfortunate is that this is where, for a vast majority of the world's cooks, Indian food seems stuck, despite the fact that most eating cultures seem to be groping towards a more vegetarian diet, and the sheer splendour of what India has to offer by way of cooking vegetables. There are thousands of Indian restaurants across the world serving undifferentiated over-spiced glop, millions of packaged tikka masalas get sold every year, and varieties of curry powder show up in almost every kitchen, but relatively few non-desi chefs, other than a small global elite, many of them British, seem to be exploring how they could transform their cooking using everyday ideas from Indian cooks.