Topic: First Curry..?

[fried]

I can't really remember the first and as a kid our family always went for Chinese if we had a takeaway.

So it wasn't until I went to uni in Preston that i tried curry. The first one that sticks in my mind was a curry that I was given after a wedding.

My landlord at this point was a Pakistani with a string of student housing and when he needed some work doing he'd give me a call and I 'd do various decorating jobs on the side. One day he came round and asked if I wanted a few quid for cleaning up after a wedding. I was always skint at this time and readily agreed. The job was to clean the giant pots with a hose and didn't take long. Along with my pay I was given 3 2-litre tubs of pilau rice and 3 of curry sauce. It was delicious, blisteringly hot and had apparently been cooking for a few days. All the meat had disintergrated, leaving just sauce and bones. The pilau rice had 6 inch long bits of cinnamon which blew me away at the time. My landlord confessed that he'd found it too hot for him. He said it was a vinderloo but it obviously bares no resemblence to any BIR or traditional version I've ever seen.

I finished all the pots and even though it was far too spicy for me at the time. I remember sweating, trembling and my vision going funny, it was just too good to waste.
T

[natterjak]

I remember very clearly my first BIR curry. It was 1985. A takeaway brought home by my Dad and the aroma when he opened it up was out of world. It was chicken Ceylon, bright yellow in colour and (to my uninitiated palate) eye wateringly hot. Prevalent flavours were coconut, ginger and coriander (plus the chilli heat). Texture was fairly thin and runny. There was nothing sweet about the flavour.

The yellow colour can only have come from food colouring but even so I doubt there was any tomato ingredients or paprika,etc.  certainly it was nothing like the brown / red modern Ceylon dishes.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Prevalent flavours were coconut, ginger and coriander (plus the chilli heat).

Was this coriander as in seed, leaf or stalk, do you recall ?  It is a lot to ask, because I would have no idea after this amount of time, but as you remember so clearly you may be able to decide amongst the three.  I ask because I gave up using (ground) Coriander seed in my curries some time ago, and occasionally wonder what I am missing.  I am also increasingly aware from tasting Mrs Athwal's assorted Indian snacks that there are /far/ more spices in the Indian arsenal than I suspect most of us use on a regular basis ...

** Phil.

[Secret Santa]

The only part of the meal I can clearly remember was Bombay Duck

Ah, Bombay Duck : where has it gone ?  I remember it from that era too, but it seems to have completely disappeared from the scene ...
Afterthought : probably banned under the Trade Descriptions Act, along with Scotch Woodcock

** Phil.

I remember my dad bringing this home in his take away. I think it disappeared for health and safety reasons and just never came back (thankfully many would argue).

[Peripatetic Phil]

I think it disappeared for health and safety reasons

Odd, really, when you think that the sole reason for its invention was Elf-'n'-Safety (i.e., to allow those far from the coast to enjoy fish throughout the year) !

European Union import restrictions

In 1997, Bombay duck was banned by the European Commission (EC) of the European Union. The EC admitted that it had no "sanitary" evidence against the product and the UK Public Health Laboratory Service confirmed that there were no recorded cases of food poisoning, or bacterial contamination, associated with Bombay duck. It was banned because the EC only allows fish imports from India from approved freezing and canning factories, and bombay duck is not produced in factories. Before the ban, consumption in the United Kingdom was over 13 tonnes per year.

According to "The Save Bombay Duck campaign",[3] the Indian High Commission approached the European Commission about the ban. The EC adjusted the regulations so that the fish can still be dried in the open air but has to be packed in an "EC approved" packing station. A Birmingham wholesale merchant located a packing source in Mumbai, and the product became available again in the United Kingdom.

Bombay duck is available fresh in Canada in cities with large Indian populations, such as Toronto and Montreal and is generally known as bumla. Although mainly popular with Indians from Bengal, southern Gujarat, coastal Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka, it is increasingly consumed by the other South Asian populations, Bangaladeshis in particular.

** Phil.