Today the curry belongs to everyone. The Japanese eat karei raisu - 'curry rice'. The Chinese eat gali ji - curry chicken. In Thailand and Malaysia, people eat curries made with coconut milk. It is a dish that can find a home anywhere.

Many influences

A lot of famous 'curry' dishes are recent inventions. A popular dish in Britain, for example, is chicken tikka masala. Chicken tikka is a north Indian dish. It is chicken soaked in yoghurt and spices and roasted on a stick. Masala is a sauce from southern India. In Britain, they combined the two because British people like gravy. Vindaloo was a Portuguese dish once. The Portuguese had a colony in Goa in the south of India. The dish gradually became a kind of curry.

Blame the Brits

Like Hong Kong before, India used to be a British colony. Indians did not use the word 'curry'. They had a special word for every dish they ate. But the British borrowed the Tamil word 'kari' for any spicy dish in a gravy.

The first recipe for curry appeared in Britain in 1747. It was in a recipe book called the Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse. The first British 'curry house' opened in 1809 in London. It was called the Hindostanee Coffee House.

It doesn't have to be spicy

Most people think of curry as a spicy dish. It did not start out that way. Chili peppers do not grow naturally in India. Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer who discovered the New World (America) in 1492, brought chili seeds back to Europe.

From Europe, the chili pepper spread all over the world. There were no chili peppers in China before Columbus.

now do this

1 'Curry' comes from a southern Indian word meaning ...

a. spice

b. sauce

c. powder

2 Chili comes from ...

a. South America

b. China

c. India

3 India used to be a colony of ...

a. Portugal

b. Italy

c. Britain

Answers

1. b, 2. a, 3. c