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Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors looks at the popular Indian dishes that are most well known in the west today and attempts to trace them back to their roots. The Indian cuisine is varied and differs widely according to region.
As the author examines the food traditions in India, she goes into the factors that influenced them. She closely examines the dishes that define Indian cooking in the west today and goes into the history of each, examining the many cultures that influenced them.
As the author started to study the food habits of the country, she discovered that people from one region in India can be completely unaware of the eating habits and cuisines of other regions. These cuisines may be so varied as to be unrecognizable as ‘Indian’ even among Indians.
She traces the cultural, political, religious and other influences on the evolution of many popular indian foods. For over a thousand years, invaders from several parts of the world had ruled India and had left their influences on the cuisines.
The author tries to trace the development of dietary habits in India, from the basic foundation for a good diet as prescribed by Ayurveda, and the way this diet had been adapted by each region to suit the cereals and other ingredients available locally.
Over time, vegetarianism emerged as a major practice and this lead to the evolution of many spicy vegetarian dishes. The Mughals infused flavors from Persia and Central Asia to Indian dishes. The portuguese brought in new spices and the British adapted the Indian curries to suit their palate.
The author slowly explains how the modern varieties of Indian cuisines were influenced by many cultures and in turn influenced them, and how different cuisines from different parts of India influenced each other as people from various regions of India migrated to cosmopolitan cities.
Thus, Indian cooking is a dynamic combination of a number of intriguing influences, and what is known as Indian food is in fact international in its flavor, as the basic, traditional Indian foods evolved to adapt many spices and flavors introduced by the numerous invaders and rulers from different regions of the world.ISBN - 9780099437864
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Pages : 336
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