Talking about curry on BBC World Global

I had a fantastic experience a couple of nights back when I was invited to join in on a discussion on curry on BBC World.

I went to the local studio at Bandra at night and was linked up to Global, Mathew Amroliwala’s show, from London. The other guest was chef Rakesh Nair, the head chef of Cinnamon Kitchen, London.

The point I tried to make was that there is a lot more to Indian food than curry and we in India are perhaps not as obsessed with curry as those in the UK are. What I did admit to was that there is a lot more action happening in the London Indian restaurant scene right now than in Mumbai. Most restaurants opening here tend to focus on international cuisines.

Coincidentally I am reading a book called Curry by Shrabani Basu which talks about the rise of Britain’s curry culture. I had blogged about my interaction with London’s British chefs here.

Here is the link to a recording of the segment of our talk on curry.

Hope you find it interesting. As for me, I am still tripping on the experience. It was broadcast live all over the world.

Blogger, author and TV show judge, Simon Majumdar, who has moved to the US from UK, had this to say on the discussion when he saw the link on the Finely Chopped Facebook Page.

Simon Majumdar Very well articulated. When I try to explain to people in the US about the difference between “curry” and regional Indian food I use the example of regional Italian food and the “red sauce” Italian food often found in the US which like curry in the UK is a creation made by ex pats for the local community. Curry may not be an authentic Indian cuisine, but I do believe that it has now become a cuisine in its own right and, when done well can be excellent. Personally, I love to both try and recreate dishes I find on my travels to India (and ones I learned from my Bengali relatives) as well as trying to recreate curry house dishes I loved as I grew up in Sheffield and London.