Curry connections

I think I had heard it repeated so many times that that is why I remember it: "Indian Food is either inauthentic or inedible." I can't seem to remember clearly the face of the man who I so often heard saying this, but I know it was a man, and I know the group of people, friends of my mother. And it seems that there was a rather longer story that went with this saying describing the kind of hot that clears out your sinuses, and I don't know what else, something along the lines of there's hot and then there's HOT. I think perhaps the saying was not original to the person I heard say it. Oh, and when I think nasal clearing hot, I think of Chinese mustard. I enjoy just the tiniest bit of such heat.

Among other things, I associate the above mentioned group with trying unusual--or that is to say foreign--foods, and dancing. I remember that for a brief while they had taken up Greek dancing, and then ballroom dancing. I imagine it was because of their influence, that my mom made curry sometime around this time, when I was in high school. It is impossible to guess all of the things that have influenced our parents. Just as impossible for me to describe all the complex web of associations I have in my mind!

I definitely recall Mom making curry, not very many times, but at least more than once, and that she served it with separate bowls of things to pass, like coconut and I don't remember what else. Later on, many years later, she had no memory of ever making curry and claimed that she certainly had never done so, that in fact she hated curry. Ironically, when I was grown up, I used to boast to my friends about how my Mom had liked to try different foods and that was how I came to like so many different foods; I believe I always mentioned curry specifically.

I have now in my possession the encyclopedic set of cookbooks (a set of 12), that Mom had bought from the grocery store, one volume at a time. I loved those books, and used to spend many hours looking through them at all the lovely pictures of different kinds of food. In those volumes, perhaps in the C's under curry, or maybe it's under Indian cooking, there is a photo of curry presented just that way, with coconut and other things in little bowls. I used to think curry was always served that way.

But later I lived in Hawaii, and found out that curry is by no means a food limited to the cuisines of India. One of the people I met in Hawaii had grown up in Japan and liked curry Japanese style. I don't have any very strong memory of her version, just that it was served with rice. That and that she knew the difference. There was a certain curry stew that I used to go to get from a Chinese restaurant for lunch, it came served with rice, also, and it is my ideal of what curry should taste like. There was a healthfood store I used to frequent that always smelled of curry. And I remember that Thai curry has unique characteristics, the sauce mixed with coconut milk, but it tended to be too spicy for my preferences.

That makes me think of Thai cuisine--I loved one particular Thai restaurant's Thai iced tea. I recall the first time I ate Thai food. It was after a basket-making class I attended with some people in my folk-dancing group. I was so tired for some reason, I could hardly read the menu. So I just went along with what ever everyone else wanted to order. We shared our selections and the others had done a great job ordering. But mostly I remember it was so refreshing that Thai iced tea.