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From the NYT:
Britons Perturbed by a Troubling Shortage of Curry Chefs
By KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA NOV. 4, 2015… But the curry industry has found itself in a pickle: There are not enough curry chefs in Britain.
The Conservative government’s restrictions on immigration are causing an acute staff shortage, said Shahanoor Khan, the secretary general of the British Bangladeshi Caterer Association. Already, he said in an interview, a third of the nation’s 12,500 curry houses are facing closing because they cannot find chefs.
The first generation of curry chefs who opened restaurants in the 1960s were mostly from East Pakistan, what is now Bangladesh, and are now retiring, but they cannot find cooks to replace them, Mr. Khan said. Younger, better-educated and more assimilated British Asians are reluctant to take on the family business because of the grueling hours and low pay.
… “Because of immigration, you have tikka masala,” said Paul Scully, a Conservative lawmaker and chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group of the Curry Catering Industry. Curry proves that immigration is no threat to Britain’s “cohesive society,” he said, criticizing Theresa May, the home secretary, who told the Conservative Party conference last month that migrants were endangering national cohesion.
Mohammad Azad, the executive chef at Cafe Saffron in Shrewsbury, said he had tried to hire Europeans. But there were “so many barriers in the kitchen, starting with the language,” he said at a curry chef awards ceremony held in London. …
“When it gets busy in the kitchen and you start shouting in Bengali, it’s difficult for a Romanian to understand,” Mr. Azad said, raising his voice above the din.
Staff shortages are common among all types of restaurants, but they are particularly worrisome for those specializing in curry….
Politicians and entrepreneurs like Mr. Scully and Mr. Bilimoria are urging the government to relax immigration rules. Britain puts a cap on skilled migrants arriving from outside the European Union and requires chefs seeking entry to be paid at least £29,570 a year, which is £5,000 more than the average salary in the industry. …
Mr. Bilimoria agreed. “Should we expect our curry to be cooked in Delhi and flown over to us?” he asked. “No,” he said. “We need chefs right here.”
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
You know they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here. How can Brits live without curry?
Remember citizen: being turned into an ethnic minority in your own country is good because of yummy foreign cuisine!
Mr. Azad, who is presumably one of these Bangladeshi chefs from the 60s, still, 50 years later, yells at his staff in Bengali. That’s why we need more Bengalis in Britain (these ones will of course assimilate and… er learn the language)
There are a lot of Roma (originally from the Indian subcontinent) in the UK . Maybe they could use them as cooks.
Here’s an example of a British Roma cooking:
If it’s any consolation to Britain’s vital curry industry, a lot of the “Syrians” coming in through Southern Europe are actually Bangladeshi.
One used to sell his birthright for a bowl of stew, now one’s stew just gets more enriched.
“Mohammad Azad, the executive chef at Cafe Saffron in Shrewsbury, said he had tried to hire Europeans. But there were “so many barriers in the kitchen, starting with the language,” he said at a curry chef awards ceremony held in London. …
“When it gets busy in the kitchen and you start shouting in Bengali, it’s difficult for a Romanian to understand,” Mr. Azad said, raising his voice above the din.”
Surely, The Onion can sue for copyright infringement for outright literary theft like this.
Oh no, there are crops rotting in the field and not enough qualified individuals available to pick them.
Seriously, this is becoming parody at this point. Send all immigrants back home, including that “KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA”, what is that, a Japanese-Brazilian?
Curry is also big in Japan, although they don’t have immigration there. Though it tastes nothing like real curry:
If you ask Japanese people, they clearly distinguish in their minds between Indian, Thai, and Japanese curries, as if they had their own distinct curry tradition. The fact is, there is Indian and Thai curry, and then there is a brown, flavorless sauce that Japanese people pour on rice.
"Curry" in the UK, BTW, means not just one particular dish but is the word for what we would call "Indian food" and a "curry house" is what we would call an "Indian restaurant". And in India, there is no dish that is called "curry" nor any spice blend that is called "curry powder". And chicken tikka masala, which many people think of as the quintessential Indian dish, was invented in the UK.
It gets even stranger when Indians try to make what they call "Chinese" food, which only vaguely resembles actual Chinese food.Replies: @Numinous
“I hope it was worth it,” he added.
Obviously native born Brits could never, ever, ever in a million years learn how to make a curry. And it would be racist of them to even try.
What a garbage article.
UrduBengali he is SOL.Curry is absolutely dirt-simple to make, if you don't mind shelling out for a few slightly-unusual spices like cumin and turmeric. Poke around the internet for a two minutes, find a simple recipe, and improvise from there- if you have a basic level of competence in the kitchen, it's practically impossible to get a curry "wrong". No two chefs make it exactly the same, anyway. I learned to make it on the first attempt from a vague description by a white woman who used to tend bar at an Indian restaurant.Replies: @Massimo Heitor
Yes, because that's cultural appropriation. And that is always wrong.
and if you expect them to assimilate, well that's racist. So don't expect the curry chef position to expand outside of the ghetto.
Ed West’s response when I shared that with him via Twitter:
I have seen plenty of Indian and Thai restaurants in California with Mexican Chefs making curry. We can send them some, happy to help.
Has evolved into selling your birthright (diluting the value of your British citizenship) for a mess of curried whatever.
What a garbage article.Replies: @Clyde, @Anonymous, @LKM, @Rapparee, @Half canadian
One of the agitators for allowing more (millions?) curry chefs to immigrate said there is a language barrier in the hash house kitchen especially during busy times. So unless a native Brit can speak
UrduBengali he is SOL.‘Anne Main, the Conservative MP for St Albans, said: “It seems rather perverse that a poor Polish immigrant can walk into this country and take up any vacancy…while a poor, skilled Bangladeshi chef is not able to do that”….But Steve McCabe, Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, rejected the Tory MPs’ stance, insisting that skilled chefs in world cuisines could be trained in Britain’s sixth-form and further education colleges”‘
Umm….so fewer Poles and more Bangladeshis is the *Conservative* position whereas Labour thinks native Brits can do those jobs just fine, thank you very much? Is it Opposite Day or something?
If you can’t trust ” the secretary general of the British Bangladeshi Caterer Association” who can you trust? It’s Monty Python’s world …
You hit the nail on the head. LOL.
Monty Python is exactly what I thought of when I read this line:
“When it gets busy in the kitchen and you start shouting in Bengali, it’s difficult for a Romanian to understand"
Maybe the Bangladeshi restauranter should yell less, pay more, and actually learn English.
A tight labor market produces good incentives.
“I have seen plenty of Indian and Thai restaurants in California with Mexican Chefs making curry. We can send them some, happy to help.”
I’ve noticed Mexicans in California have superpowers. They can also do Chinese, Afghan, Vietnamese vegetarian, or anything, and often seem to do it well.
The first time I saw this, I was amazed that in an area with so many unemployed black people, the owners would have to import workers.
However, after I had spent a year or so of working in the Bronx and having contact with the local NAMs, it began to make sense.
Umm....so fewer Poles and more Bangladeshis is the *Conservative* position whereas Labour thinks native Brits can do those jobs just fine, thank you very much? Is it Opposite Day or something?Replies: @Fredrik
This is also the UKIP position. It looks like the British right has a special bond to the former colonies and its inhabitants.
Chop sooey shortage next?
“The Department for Work and Pensions found the unemployment rate for whites aged 16-24 was 19% last September [2013]. The rate was 46% for young Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers and 45% for young black people.”
Ergo: in Britain, Bangladeshis have even higher unemployment rates than blacks.
And from Britain’s Office for National Statistics:
– “The highest rates of economic inactivity…for women were Arab (64%) Bangladeshi (61%), Pakistani (60%) and Gypsy or Irish Traveller (60%).”
– “Over half (54%) of Bangladeshi men in employment worked part-time (less than 30 hours a week) and just over 1 in 10 worked 15 hours a week or less (12%).”
– “Bangladeshi (56%) and Gypsy or Irish Traveller (54%) women were the most likely to work part-time (less than 30 hours a week). Bangladeshi and Pakistani women had the highest proportion working less than 15 hours a week (23% and 20% respectively).”
And finally, there are 450,000 people in the UK of Bangladeshi origin, 1.175 million of Pakistani origin, and 1.45 million of Indian origin. All these groups saw their numbers climb enormously in the single decade from 2001 to 2011. There is no shortage of people in the UK who can make curry.
Delicious curries for low cost, allowing me to eat them daily is one of the most tangible benefits of mass immigration. It’s a good reason to keep the door open.
If native Britons decline, who will catch the eels?
It’s just an immigration scam to further Bangladeshi ethnic genetic interests in a thoroughly Salterian fashion. Nothing more. Nothing less.
‘Curry’ is just a damned lie to con the fools of the British government.
For starters, no pun intended, Bangladeshis in the UK have the highest unemployment statistics of all ethnicities. Most of them do not work. So the notion that a peculiarly Bangladeshi workforce doesn’t exist in Britain is pure BS.
Secondly, by the term ‘skilled’ it is generally understood persons trained and specialized in various technical, engineering, construction and stem fields – people actually vital to keeping the wheels of industry turning.
Boiling up big pans of rice, and tipping spices into saucepans never but never conformed to the ‘skilled worker’ category.
I googled the article’s author, and found her most recent NYT article apart from the Curry Crisis: “New Passport in Britain Puts Women in 2nd Class”
“Activists and female politicians, however, say that the new travel document is a step backward because it features seven men but only two women.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/world/europe/british-passport-design-women.html?_r=0
On the upside, she’s pretty nice looking, though I’m sure tedious would be an understatement.
I've noticed Mexicans in California have superpowers. They can also do Chinese, Afghan, Vietnamese vegetarian, or anything, and often seem to do it well.Replies: @Anonymous, @2Mintzin1
They even do a good job at Benihana.
Perturbed…Troubling
I’m somewhat perturbed — not to mention troubled — by the hyperbole of this headline. But never mind about that.
What I want to know is this: where does this stand on the ‘perturbed and troubled’ scale? — for example, in relation to the ignored sexual brutalization of young English girls in Rotherham — are “Britons” more ‘perturbed and troubled’ by that? — less? They could create a kind of graph so we could see visually what ‘perturbs and troubles’ the average ‘Briton’, and to what degree.
These claims of a curry chef shortage in Britain were wheeled out by restaurant owners a few years ago as well. It’s obviously an attempt to lobby for letting their relatives from Bangladesh and other countries move here.
It’s not like there’s a shortage of trainable young Bangladeshis living here already, many of whom aren’t in work. The restaurant owners either don’t want the expense of having to train people from scratch or else think entirely in terms of family obligations, or both.
“If you can’t trust ” the secretary general of the British Bangladeshi Caterer Association” who can you trust?”
You hit the nail on the head. LOL.
This is worse than the ‘crops rotting in the fields’ analogy. At least that one was pitched as needing more immigrants to help out for something needed for Americans. This one is not really of importance for the Brits- for the US it would be like saying we have a shortage of Quinceañera DJs so we need to bring in more Latinos. Or not enough fluent Spanish speaking clerks so need to bring in more Latinos.
Look at the situation with doctors in the UK. Their trade union (BMA) tries to keep wages high by restricting the number of doctors trained, so the employers go abroad. Increased supply of labour is a total answer to anything organised labour can do.
If an employer need a skilled workers why don’t they take local workers on and train them? If you are unemployed in Britain now you get sent on a full time mandatory unpaid work placement on garbage deposal ect for 6 months, so there is every incentive for unemployed Brits to take any job they are offered and keep it . We all know the answer. The already trained foreign worker is cheaper, and the unemployed British persons benefits are not paid for by the employer who goes abroad to recruit. Private profit, public subsidy.
Even if the British worker has the skills they increasingly don’t get a look in. There is a massive construction boom in London and the Government had to demand that the jobs at least be advertised in Britain. They employers were (and still are) importing Romanians ect en mass and passing over British workers.
A great cosmic joke against the liberal notion that diversity brings in a massive improvement in available cuisine is that the vast majority of the dishes being served are actually extremely mediocre at best. Diabolical oftentimes.
I have lived for half my life in Asia and I will say that most Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai food in the West is terrible by comparison with the real thing. A grand private joke against stupid westerners.
Indian food has entered a sort of peculiar status as an oily comfort food beyond normal judgement that is especially loved by the sort of people who play latino music because they think it is authentic.
The British Indian curry traditional started with amazed migrants discovering that in the drap, dull glow of the post-war years a giant bucket of curry in the back room, supplemented by optional extras like more chillies or yoghurt, could be presented to their ignorant customers as an array of exotic but cheap dishes to be washed down the beer. It was always a business model that was likely to end at some point.
The key problem with curry houses is that, like Chinese restaurants, they have lost novelty value and can’t increase prices because there are limits to how gullible even westerners are. Many Chinese caterers switched to “Thai” to – for a time – try to outflank their customers’ boredom and their increasing awareness of the joke being played against them.
When people buy food, they have a really good idea of what they are paying and what they get in return, so it is silly to argue that they are being tricked.The type of haute cuisine you refer to with technical complexity and elaborate plating is not what mass market food service is about. And most restaurants including Asian restaurants are businesses catering to mass market needs, so that's not what they do. It's generally not hard to find luxury Asian dining or cook books if you want that.
On the original post, it is humorously hypocritical that curry is "proof" that immigration is no threat to a cohesive society in England, yet the curry shops won't hire Romanians because there is too big of a culture barrier that they don't speak Bengali.Replies: @Bill B.
“When it gets busy in the kitchen and you start shouting in Bengali, it’s difficult for a Romanian to understand,” Mr. Azad said,…”
This vile racist needs to learn how to appreciate the benefits of diversity. The need for Reeducation Centers has never been greater.
Only a few sentences further..
Doublethink. Someone mentioned that word some threads ago.
I've noticed Mexicans in California have superpowers. They can also do Chinese, Afghan, Vietnamese vegetarian, or anything, and often seem to do it well.Replies: @Anonymous, @2Mintzin1
Ditto the Bronx. Go into an Italian deli in the (shrinking, but still there ) Little Italy around Arthur Avenue and take a gander at who’s making the sandwiches. Ay caramba!
The first time I saw this, I was amazed that in an area with so many unemployed black people, the owners would have to import workers.
However, after I had spent a year or so of working in the Bronx and having contact with the local NAMs, it began to make sense.
…but they cannot find cooks to replace them, Mr. Khan said. Younger, better-educated and more assimilated British Asians are reluctant to take on the family business because of the grueling hours and low pay.
Surely it is racist not to allow businessmen to run their sweat shops according to their traditional Third World standards.
What a garbage article.Replies: @Clyde, @Anonymous, @LKM, @Rapparee, @Half canadian
Obviously native born Brits could never, ever, ever in a million years learn how to make a curry. And it would be racist of them to even try.
What a garbage article.
You will not be assimilated. You will not have cultural appropriation performed on you. You may not pass Go.
Oh god lord. Have you ever tried to make Indian food? It’s simple. Sure, you might need to go buy a few spices you don’t have in your spice drawer, but there is nothing challenging about making it. Indeed, other than Japanese, most Asian food is quite easy to make when you’re talking about the kind of food you get in a take out place. It’s largely slapping a bunch of ingredients together and cooking in a way that allows a great deal of room for error. It’s more challenging to make a good steak and far more challenging to make a good French sauce. There’s little skill involved in Asian food and no creative plating — you just dump it in a takeout box or a bowl. I make Indian food often, and it’s just as good as any you’d get in a takeaway (better, because I use better cuts of meat), and it’s just as good as your Indian friend’s grandmother’s cooking, because old Indian women don’t have any magic either (though they may have some tricks up their sleeve, and most importantly, lots of free time).
Yet somehow we have this mystical belief that only an Indian can make Indian food. Yet we would never say only an Italian can make Italian food — that would be racist!
Any half-wit willing to work can be a short order cook for any kind of cuisine. Remember back in the day in America when you’d walk into a dinner or a hash house and the cookey behind the grill was often a black guy? Yet another job that blacks have lost to immigration.
being a short order cook was a trade-unglamorous, hot hard oily smelly work, but it took a skill set that was not trivial. It did not take a particularly high IQ, but it did take time and a willingness to work at it to become competent. A good short order cook, black or white, male or female, in the years from after WWII to the seventies could go wherever he or she wanted and be working in a day or two. He or she could make a reasonable income.
Immigration and franchising ruined that. However, the modern franchise joints have one advantage: consistent mediocrity. You can go into any town in the midwest, most of the southeast and much of the southwest and find a burger joint, or a sit down restaurant and know that a Denny's in New Mexico will have food just like one in Oregon or Pennsylvania. The old greasy spoons were very variable: some were quite good and some were ptomaine pits. And they'd change over time. Just because it was good last year didn't mean it was good this year.
Those who pine for the good old days forget the downside sometimes. Still, we were better off when 90 IQ but hardworking people could be short order cooks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSEdiKB4ThYReplies: @Chrisnonymous, @Jack D, @Yngvar
It’s awful. Supposedly, Japanese curry derives from the slop that they used to serve sailors on western ships that came to to Japan.
If you ask Japanese people, they clearly distinguish in their minds between Indian, Thai, and Japanese curries, as if they had their own distinct curry tradition. The fact is, there is Indian and Thai curry, and then there is a brown, flavorless sauce that Japanese people pour on rice.
“It’s Monty Python’s world”
Monty Python is exactly what I thought of when I read this line:
“When it gets busy in the kitchen and you start shouting in Bengali, it’s difficult for a Romanian to understand”
Paul Scully – a Tory who would sell his birthright for a mess of curry.
What a garbage article.Replies: @Clyde, @Anonymous, @LKM, @Rapparee, @Half canadian
I’m of British descent and make a pretty bitchin’ curry, but somehow I doubt I’d ever get hired by a Bangladeshi.
And that’s why The Economist nominates Mutter Merkel as The Indispensable European!
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21677643-angela-merkel-faces-her-most-serious-political-challenge-yet-europe-needs-her-more
Setting aside the unintentional hilarity of a piece of “journalism” that is so poorly written as to appear parody, the most relevant part of the piece IMHO is the following:
Politicians, apparently, are simply immune to the basic realities of a market economy.
IF there is a real shortage, wages by NECESSITY will increase. Five thousand quid per year is not very much, really.
This, like the arguments in the US about jobs that “Americans won’t do” is a manufactured crisis. The solution is not to import thousands (millions) more with the implicit goal of keeping wages low – it is to allow the wages to reflect the actual value of the labour.
These people are not stupid; this is ignorance of a level of aggressiveness that simply is not feasible. It’s not physically possible to get one’s head THAT far up one’s lower alimentary canal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSEdiKB4ThYReplies: @Chrisnonymous, @Jack D, @Yngvar
The Japanese got curry by way of the British Navy. At the end of the 19th century they went on a crash program to militarize and catch up with the West technologically so they wouldn’t end up being another European colony. The British had the best navy so they decided to copy theirs. The imitation extended to even imitating the diet of the British sailors, which apparently included curry by way of India.
“Curry” in the UK, BTW, means not just one particular dish but is the word for what we would call “Indian food” and a “curry house” is what we would call an “Indian restaurant”. And in India, there is no dish that is called “curry” nor any spice blend that is called “curry powder”. And chicken tikka masala, which many people think of as the quintessential Indian dish, was invented in the UK.
It gets even stranger when Indians try to make what they call “Chinese” food, which only vaguely resembles actual Chinese food.
And there definitely is something called curry powder (at least it's marketed by that name in India); it's a blend of different spices, though I don't know what they areReplies: @Jack D
What a garbage article.Replies: @Clyde, @Anonymous, @LKM, @Rapparee, @Half canadian
There seems to be a common pattern with ethnic food: the first generation of immigrants introduce some cheap peasant dish from back home, and at first, Westerners are blown-away, having never tasted anything like it. They assume that there’s some kind of kitchen voodoo at work that only a true-born Ruritanian can comprehend. A few decades after entering mainstream palates, some enterprising local chef with gourmet tastes says to himself, “You know, the takeout fare at the ethnic joint up the street is actually kind of greasy and salty and made with lesser-quality ingredients. I think I can do better“. The best Tikka Masala I ever ate was cooked by a red-haired German-American.
The first English curry recipe was published in 1747. Sir Thomas Roe visited India in 1615. It only took them 132 years (pretty quick, for the Age of Sail).
Curry is absolutely dirt-simple to make, if you don’t mind shelling out for a few slightly-unusual spices like cumin and turmeric. Poke around the internet for a two minutes, find a simple recipe, and improvise from there- if you have a basic level of competence in the kitchen, it’s practically impossible to get a curry “wrong“. No two chefs make it exactly the same, anyway. I learned to make it on the first attempt from a vague description by a white woman who used to tend bar at an Indian restaurant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSEdiKB4ThYReplies: @Chrisnonymous, @Jack D, @Yngvar
A Japanese eating with a spoon… Now I have seen everything.
Ergo: in Britain, Bangladeshis have even higher unemployment rates than blacks.
And from Britain's Office for National Statistics:
- "The highest rates of economic inactivity...for women were Arab (64%) Bangladeshi (61%), Pakistani (60%) and Gypsy or Irish Traveller (60%)."
- "Over half (54%) of Bangladeshi men in employment worked part-time (less than 30 hours a week) and just over 1 in 10 worked 15 hours a week or less (12%)."
- "Bangladeshi (56%) and Gypsy or Irish Traveller (54%) women were the most likely to work part-time (less than 30 hours a week). Bangladeshi and Pakistani women had the highest proportion working less than 15 hours a week (23% and 20% respectively)."
And finally, there are 450,000 people in the UK of Bangladeshi origin, 1.175 million of Pakistani origin, and 1.45 million of Indian origin. All these groups saw their numbers climb enormously in the single decade from 2001 to 2011. There is no shortage of people in the UK who can make curry.Replies: @dearieme
I’d think that the unemployed Pakistanis and Bangladeshis would be rather too busy with their jobs to want to be curry cooks.
http://www.indeed.co.uk/Curry-Chef-jobs
138 Curry Chef Job vacancies available on Indeed.co.uk. one search.
Salary Estimate
£15,000+ (125)
£20,000+ (73)
£25,000+ (17)
£30,000+ (3)
Location London
They pay more in Oz (too lazy to check exchange rate/cost o’ living)- so maybe no shortage?
http://au.indeed.com/Indian-Curry-Chef-jobs
Indian Curry Chef jobs
Salary Estimate
$50,000+ (31)
$70,000+ (1)
“Please Sir. I want some more.”
Oliver Twist
“When it gets busy in the kitchen and you start shouting in Bengali, it’s difficult for a Romanian to understand,” Mr. Azad said, raising his voice above the din."
Surely, The Onion can sue for copyright infringement for outright literary theft like this.Replies: @AndrewR
What do you mean? If ensuring Romanian immigrants can understand Bengali chefs who have been in the UK for fifty years isn’t as compelling a reason for open borders as there can be, then what is?
"Curry" in the UK, BTW, means not just one particular dish but is the word for what we would call "Indian food" and a "curry house" is what we would call an "Indian restaurant". And in India, there is no dish that is called "curry" nor any spice blend that is called "curry powder". And chicken tikka masala, which many people think of as the quintessential Indian dish, was invented in the UK.
It gets even stranger when Indians try to make what they call "Chinese" food, which only vaguely resembles actual Chinese food.Replies: @Numinous
“Curry” is the Tamil word for any generic vegetable dish cooked in spices and having some gravy. The word’s meaning has expanded to include meat dishes in other part of the country; evidently in Britain, it exclusively refers to meat dishes cooked Indian style.
And there definitely is something called curry powder (at least it’s marketed by that name in India); it’s a blend of different spices, though I don’t know what they are
"Curry powder and the contemporary English use of the word "curry" are Western inventions and do not reflect any specific South Asian food, though a similar mixture of spices used in north South Asia is called garam masala."
You can also get chicken tikka masala in India nowadays, as well as English style "curry powder" - the items have gone full circle from India to the UK and back again. Garam masala is not really an equivalent as it usually contains no tumeric while Western curry powders have tumeric as a main ingredient (which is why they are usually yellow). Traditionally Indian cooks would make up a different spice blend for each dish but nowadays there are many conveniently pre-blended spice packets available, each suited to a particular dish - basically they have re-invented curry powder, though they don't call it that.
It's not even clear that the word curry is connected to the Tamil word kari .
http://zesterdaily.com/world/origins-of-curry-and-spiced-yogurt-recipe/
Kari in Tamil doesn't really mean sauce it means black, which might (depending on who you ask) refer to black pepper or the fact that the vegetables are first blackened over a fire .
The Brits can just start enjoying that soup the Romanians make with the cow’s stomach lining. That’s something Britons can get their culinary mind around for sure.
WHAT?? No real homestyle Indian matar paneer? What if the next generations of other ethnic groups show a similar failure? That means no chicken shawarma! And no Tom Kha soup! And no Ugali cakes! And no vaca frita de pollo! And sushi, I can’t live without sushi by real sushi chefs.
That’s it – I’m voting for Trump. Where’s my “make america great again” hat? If I can’t have my homemade ethnic food, that’s it. Seriously, I’ve had it.
Curry has declined in popularity as people have become more health conscious, chefs on lower wages won’t change this. Japanese is very popular now but there aren’t many Japanese to make it. They seem to do fine anyway.
And there definitely is something called curry powder (at least it's marketed by that name in India); it's a blend of different spices, though I don't know what they areReplies: @Jack D
From the wiki for “curry powder”
“Curry powder and the contemporary English use of the word “curry” are Western inventions and do not reflect any specific South Asian food, though a similar mixture of spices used in north South Asia is called garam masala.”
You can also get chicken tikka masala in India nowadays, as well as English style “curry powder” – the items have gone full circle from India to the UK and back again. Garam masala is not really an equivalent as it usually contains no tumeric while Western curry powders have tumeric as a main ingredient (which is why they are usually yellow). Traditionally Indian cooks would make up a different spice blend for each dish but nowadays there are many conveniently pre-blended spice packets available, each suited to a particular dish – basically they have re-invented curry powder, though they don’t call it that.
It’s not even clear that the word curry is connected to the Tamil word kari .
http://zesterdaily.com/world/origins-of-curry-and-spiced-yogurt-recipe/
Kari in Tamil doesn’t really mean sauce it means black, which might (depending on who you ask) refer to black pepper or the fact that the vegetables are first blackened over a fire .
From Wikipedia:
Without curry, what will the toilet paper industry do? Will no-one think of the knock-on effects throughout the whole economy?
Yet somehow we have this mystical belief that only an Indian can make Indian food. Yet we would never say only an Italian can make Italian food -- that would be racist!
Any half-wit willing to work can be a short order cook for any kind of cuisine. Remember back in the day in America when you'd walk into a dinner or a hash house and the cookey behind the grill was often a black guy? Yet another job that blacks have lost to immigration.Replies: @Former Darfur, @Dave Pinsen, @Jim Don Bob, @unpc downunder
In the days before franchises deployed by 100 percent leveraged holding companies and having completely removed all decisionmaking from the workers were the only eating places available,
being a short order cook was a trade-unglamorous, hot hard oily smelly work, but it took a skill set that was not trivial. It did not take a particularly high IQ, but it did take time and a willingness to work at it to become competent. A good short order cook, black or white, male or female, in the years from after WWII to the seventies could go wherever he or she wanted and be working in a day or two. He or she could make a reasonable income.
Immigration and franchising ruined that. However, the modern franchise joints have one advantage: consistent mediocrity. You can go into any town in the midwest, most of the southeast and much of the southwest and find a burger joint, or a sit down restaurant and know that a Denny’s in New Mexico will have food just like one in Oregon or Pennsylvania. The old greasy spoons were very variable: some were quite good and some were ptomaine pits. And they’d change over time. Just because it was good last year didn’t mean it was good this year.
Those who pine for the good old days forget the downside sometimes. Still, we were better off when 90 IQ but hardworking people could be short order cooks.
I have lived for half my life in Asia and I will say that most Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai food in the West is terrible by comparison with the real thing. A grand private joke against stupid westerners.
Indian food has entered a sort of peculiar status as an oily comfort food beyond normal judgement that is especially loved by the sort of people who play latino music because they think it is authentic.
The British Indian curry traditional started with amazed migrants discovering that in the drap, dull glow of the post-war years a giant bucket of curry in the back room, supplemented by optional extras like more chillies or yoghurt, could be presented to their ignorant customers as an array of exotic but cheap dishes to be washed down the beer. It was always a business model that was likely to end at some point.
The key problem with curry houses is that, like Chinese restaurants, they have lost novelty value and can't increase prices because there are limits to how gullible even westerners are. Many Chinese caterers switched to "Thai" to - for a time - try to outflank their customers' boredom and their increasing awareness of the joke being played against them.Replies: @Massimo Heitor
The best Chinese chefs on the planet are in California. Chefs can earn more money in California and there is a large Chinese community there, so the best chefs go there.
When people buy food, they have a really good idea of what they are paying and what they get in return, so it is silly to argue that they are being tricked.
The type of haute cuisine you refer to with technical complexity and elaborate plating is not what mass market food service is about. And most restaurants including Asian restaurants are businesses catering to mass market needs, so that’s not what they do. It’s generally not hard to find luxury Asian dining or cook books if you want that.
On the original post, it is humorously hypocritical that curry is “proof” that immigration is no threat to a cohesive society in England, yet the curry shops won’t hire Romanians because there is too big of a culture barrier that they don’t speak Bengali.
This also happens to restaurants in the developing world that cater to tourists.
The notion that the market validates every dining choice is misconceived if customers are making purchase decisions in ignorance. A crap car that sells superbly because of misleading advertising and customer naïvety is in a market not fulfilling its function.
The notion that a vibrant food culture is a great boon in itself is as misleading as saying that the Out Of Compton crowd have enriched western culture.
They use forks and knives as well. Quite clever people.
People always tell travelers to the U.K. that the Indian food there is the only food worth eating–but it’s the only place I’ve been where the Indian food can be truly revolting. For cheap in the U.K., I prefer pub food (although without that creepy dark-brown gravy), mediocre Italian food (never too awful if you stick to the pastas), and–my favorite, fish ‘n’ chips. That’s because it’s cooked really fast and the fish has to be really fresh.
Indian food at Indian restaurants in America is much better (better ingredients, I suspect). My mother, who’s been to India, says the Indian food in America beats the Indian food in India. I can believe that.
Curry is absolutely dirt-simple to make, if you don't mind shelling out for a few slightly-unusual spices like cumin and turmeric. Poke around the internet for a two minutes, find a simple recipe, and improvise from there- if you have a basic level of competence in the kitchen, it's practically impossible to get a curry "wrong". No two chefs make it exactly the same, anyway. I learned to make it on the first attempt from a vague description by a white woman who used to tend bar at an Indian restaurant.Replies: @Massimo Heitor
The basic skill of making food is usually easy to learn, but food service work is generally hard work that is undesirable to educated westerners.
Yet somehow we have this mystical belief that only an Indian can make Indian food. Yet we would never say only an Italian can make Italian food -- that would be racist!
Any half-wit willing to work can be a short order cook for any kind of cuisine. Remember back in the day in America when you'd walk into a dinner or a hash house and the cookey behind the grill was often a black guy? Yet another job that blacks have lost to immigration.Replies: @Former Darfur, @Dave Pinsen, @Jim Don Bob, @unpc downunder
A people with extreme perfectionism and attention to detail, like the Japanese, can make any cuisine, which is why Tokyo leads the world in Michelin-starred restaurants. But, locally, I’ve seen flavor evaporate from Italian places when Italians left the kitchens. The best brick oven pizza place in town ceded its kitchen to Central Americans a few years ago and the pizza has been bland since.
What a garbage article.Replies: @Clyde, @Anonymous, @LKM, @Rapparee, @Half canadian
Obviously native born Brits could never, ever, ever in a million years learn how to make a curry. And it would be racist of them to even try.
Yes, because that’s cultural appropriation. And that is always wrong.
and if you expect them to assimilate, well that’s racist. So don’t expect the curry chef position to expand outside of the ghetto.
Yet somehow we have this mystical belief that only an Indian can make Indian food. Yet we would never say only an Italian can make Italian food -- that would be racist!
Any half-wit willing to work can be a short order cook for any kind of cuisine. Remember back in the day in America when you'd walk into a dinner or a hash house and the cookey behind the grill was often a black guy? Yet another job that blacks have lost to immigration.Replies: @Former Darfur, @Dave Pinsen, @Jim Don Bob, @unpc downunder
Can you recommend a good cookbook for Indian food?
http://www.amazon.com/Madhur-Jaffreys-Quick-Indian-Cooking/dp/0811859010/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1446860986&sr=1-1&keywords=madhur+jaffrey+cookbooks&refinements=p_lbr_one_browse-bin%3AMadhur+Jaffrey
If you live in an area with a lot of Indians, find an Indian grocery store. For less than what McCormick will charge for a little tiny prescription bottle of spices, you can buy a big sackful in an Indian grocery. Nowadays they also have excellent (and inexpensive) frozen and pouched food - they've caught up with modern food technology. While most simple Indian dishes can be put together quickly, there are some Indian dishes such as dosas (filled crepes) which are ridiculously time consuming and involve many steps - either you can go thru a multi- day process of grinding rice and fermenting it, etc, etc. etc.. or you can buy a box of frozen dosas for $2 and have them on your table in 10 minutes. Chinese food does not take well to reheating but most Indian food does .Replies: @peterike, @steve at steve.com
Yet somehow we have this mystical belief that only an Indian can make Indian food. Yet we would never say only an Italian can make Italian food -- that would be racist!
Any half-wit willing to work can be a short order cook for any kind of cuisine. Remember back in the day in America when you'd walk into a dinner or a hash house and the cookey behind the grill was often a black guy? Yet another job that blacks have lost to immigration.Replies: @Former Darfur, @Dave Pinsen, @Jim Don Bob, @unpc downunder
“There’s little skill involved in Asian food and no creative plating — you just dump it in a takeout box or a bowl. I make Indian food often, and it’s just as good as any you’d get in a takeaway (better, because I use better cuts of meat)…”
Indeed, walk into any western supermarket and you can find all the ingredients to make a more than adequate Indian, Chinese or South-East Asian meal. The jars of Asian sauces you can buy in supermarkets may not be Michelen star quality, but they are least as good as the sauces provided by most take-aways and mid-level restaraunts. And you’re right that the meat in those take-away meals leaves a lot to be desired.
If SWPLs had any genuine concern for workers rights they would also be avoiding Asian takeaways as well. If we have a populist political revolution then all Asian restaurants in western countries should have to prove to the government that aren’t employing illegal labour and be forced to display some evidence of this in their advertising.
If some close down all the better, we’re getting too fat on take-away food anyway.
I loved that show; it was by far my favorite show on television. Sadly the Food Network doesn't even show the reruns anymore, and you can't buy a DVD compilation because Japanese copyright laws prohibit it. Those sure are some good memories, though.Replies: @Triumph104
IF there is a real shortage, wages by NECESSITY will increase. Five thousand quid per year is not very much, really.
This, like the arguments in the US about jobs that "Americans won't do" is a manufactured crisis. The solution is not to import thousands (millions) more with the implicit goal of keeping wages low - it is to allow the wages to reflect the actual value of the labour.
These people are not stupid; this is ignorance of a level of aggressiveness that simply is not feasible. It's not physically possible to get one's head THAT far up one's lower alimentary canal.Replies: @notsaying
There’s always an excuse for everything, if you want one.
These employers always have their reasons and their excuses. All the various special interests who keep on forcing more people on us have their reasons and their excuses.
Our mission is to stop allowing those reasons and excuses to be acceptable — and accepted.
There won’t be a First World left soon if we fail.
I used to enjoy reverse-engineering the dishes I watched being prepared on Iron Chef, the original Japanese show. Iron Chef Chinese Chen Kenichi was my favorite. I loved familiarizing myself with the ingredients, tracking them down in the Asian markets, and adapting my kitchen techniques to try to replicate the effects that could be achieved in a professional grade kitchen.
I loved that show; it was by far my favorite show on television. Sadly the Food Network doesn’t even show the reruns anymore, and you can’t buy a DVD compilation because Japanese copyright laws prohibit it. Those sure are some good memories, though.
This should get you started without too much difficulty:
If you live in an area with a lot of Indians, find an Indian grocery store. For less than what McCormick will charge for a little tiny prescription bottle of spices, you can buy a big sackful in an Indian grocery. Nowadays they also have excellent (and inexpensive) frozen and pouched food – they’ve caught up with modern food technology. While most simple Indian dishes can be put together quickly, there are some Indian dishes such as dosas (filled crepes) which are ridiculously time consuming and involve many steps – either you can go thru a multi- day process of grinding rice and fermenting it, etc, etc. etc.. or you can buy a box of frozen dosas for $2 and have them on your table in 10 minutes. Chinese food does not take well to reheating but most Indian food does .
I was going to recommend a different book by the same author. "An Invitation to Indian Cooking," by Madhur Jaffrey. Like Julia Child brought French cooking to America, Jaffrey was an early proponent of Indian cooking. Her recipes are generally quite easy to follow.
Adding to Jack D's comment on spices: buy whole spices and grind them. Like for cumin or coriander. If you buy powered, it will taste like sand long before you can use it up. If you grind fresh, not only do you get a much more robust flavor, but they can last months and months (which they will need to unless you're cooking Indian frequently).
True, certain things like dosas are just too much trouble to make at home. Not necessarily difficult, but messy and time consuming. But if you want to spend a Saturday afternoon playing around it can be fun (assuming you like to cook). Though it's surprisingly easy to make basic Indian bread at home. Chapati is very simple. Naans are more work. Though you can now find quasi-fresh Naans in the supermarket that are really quite decent when heated up. But it's fun to make Chapatis and if you have kids they can help you roll them out, and it's fun to watch them puff up on the stove top.
PS - If you get Jaffrey's "Invitation," the recipe for "Carrots and peas with ginger and Chinese parsley" is fantastic, as is the "Chana masaledar" (chick peas with onions, ginger, etc.).Replies: @Jack D, @Jim Don Bob
If Britain stops importing muslims there will be a shortage of pimps. Who’s gonna groom young girls for prostitution? The Blacks are gonna have to step up to fill the void.
http://www.amazon.com/Madhur-Jaffreys-Quick-Indian-Cooking/dp/0811859010/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1446860986&sr=1-1&keywords=madhur+jaffrey+cookbooks&refinements=p_lbr_one_browse-bin%3AMadhur+Jaffrey
If you live in an area with a lot of Indians, find an Indian grocery store. For less than what McCormick will charge for a little tiny prescription bottle of spices, you can buy a big sackful in an Indian grocery. Nowadays they also have excellent (and inexpensive) frozen and pouched food - they've caught up with modern food technology. While most simple Indian dishes can be put together quickly, there are some Indian dishes such as dosas (filled crepes) which are ridiculously time consuming and involve many steps - either you can go thru a multi- day process of grinding rice and fermenting it, etc, etc. etc.. or you can buy a box of frozen dosas for $2 and have them on your table in 10 minutes. Chinese food does not take well to reheating but most Indian food does .Replies: @peterike, @steve at steve.com
I was going to recommend a different book by the same author. “An Invitation to Indian Cooking,” by Madhur Jaffrey. Like Julia Child brought French cooking to America, Jaffrey was an early proponent of Indian cooking. Her recipes are generally quite easy to follow.
Adding to Jack D’s comment on spices: buy whole spices and grind them. Like for cumin or coriander. If you buy powered, it will taste like sand long before you can use it up. If you grind fresh, not only do you get a much more robust flavor, but they can last months and months (which they will need to unless you’re cooking Indian frequently).
True, certain things like dosas are just too much trouble to make at home. Not necessarily difficult, but messy and time consuming. But if you want to spend a Saturday afternoon playing around it can be fun (assuming you like to cook). Though it’s surprisingly easy to make basic Indian bread at home. Chapati is very simple. Naans are more work. Though you can now find quasi-fresh Naans in the supermarket that are really quite decent when heated up. But it’s fun to make Chapatis and if you have kids they can help you roll them out, and it’s fun to watch them puff up on the stove top.
PS – If you get Jaffrey’s “Invitation,” the recipe for “Carrots and peas with ginger and Chinese parsley” is fantastic, as is the “Chana masaledar” (chick peas with onions, ginger, etc.).
I love me the Intertubes!
http://www.amazon.com/Madhur-Jaffreys-Quick-Indian-Cooking/dp/0811859010/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1446860986&sr=1-1&keywords=madhur+jaffrey+cookbooks&refinements=p_lbr_one_browse-bin%3AMadhur+Jaffrey
If you live in an area with a lot of Indians, find an Indian grocery store. For less than what McCormick will charge for a little tiny prescription bottle of spices, you can buy a big sackful in an Indian grocery. Nowadays they also have excellent (and inexpensive) frozen and pouched food - they've caught up with modern food technology. While most simple Indian dishes can be put together quickly, there are some Indian dishes such as dosas (filled crepes) which are ridiculously time consuming and involve many steps - either you can go thru a multi- day process of grinding rice and fermenting it, etc, etc. etc.. or you can buy a box of frozen dosas for $2 and have them on your table in 10 minutes. Chinese food does not take well to reheating but most Indian food does .Replies: @peterike, @steve at steve.com
Many Indian grocers now sell dosa batter, either fresh or frozen. They turn out better than the frozen pre-cooked. You can also make dosas from other flours, without fermenting. Much easier.
Call me weird, but jellied eel is actually on my list of foods to try, if I can ever find a restaurant that sells it.
I was going to recommend a different book by the same author. "An Invitation to Indian Cooking," by Madhur Jaffrey. Like Julia Child brought French cooking to America, Jaffrey was an early proponent of Indian cooking. Her recipes are generally quite easy to follow.
Adding to Jack D's comment on spices: buy whole spices and grind them. Like for cumin or coriander. If you buy powered, it will taste like sand long before you can use it up. If you grind fresh, not only do you get a much more robust flavor, but they can last months and months (which they will need to unless you're cooking Indian frequently).
True, certain things like dosas are just too much trouble to make at home. Not necessarily difficult, but messy and time consuming. But if you want to spend a Saturday afternoon playing around it can be fun (assuming you like to cook). Though it's surprisingly easy to make basic Indian bread at home. Chapati is very simple. Naans are more work. Though you can now find quasi-fresh Naans in the supermarket that are really quite decent when heated up. But it's fun to make Chapatis and if you have kids they can help you roll them out, and it's fun to watch them puff up on the stove top.
PS - If you get Jaffrey's "Invitation," the recipe for "Carrots and peas with ginger and Chinese parsley" is fantastic, as is the "Chana masaledar" (chick peas with onions, ginger, etc.).Replies: @Jack D, @Jim Don Bob
Yes, whole spices are the way to go. Never buy pre-ground. A little electric coffee grinder (the kind with a propeller blade, less than $20) is invaluable, or a mortar & pestle if you are a masochist. Dedicate it to spices only.
This story, like a bad curry, keeps coming back to haunt us. It’s crap.
Most ‘Indian’ restaurants in the UK are run by Bangladeshis – the food they serve is usually of poor quality. If you can find an actual Indian (like this one:http://www.prashad.co.uk/) restaurant, try it – they’re often very good – as are Nepalese restaurants (like this one: http://greatkathmandu.com/) .
I was going to recommend a different book by the same author. "An Invitation to Indian Cooking," by Madhur Jaffrey. Like Julia Child brought French cooking to America, Jaffrey was an early proponent of Indian cooking. Her recipes are generally quite easy to follow.
Adding to Jack D's comment on spices: buy whole spices and grind them. Like for cumin or coriander. If you buy powered, it will taste like sand long before you can use it up. If you grind fresh, not only do you get a much more robust flavor, but they can last months and months (which they will need to unless you're cooking Indian frequently).
True, certain things like dosas are just too much trouble to make at home. Not necessarily difficult, but messy and time consuming. But if you want to spend a Saturday afternoon playing around it can be fun (assuming you like to cook). Though it's surprisingly easy to make basic Indian bread at home. Chapati is very simple. Naans are more work. Though you can now find quasi-fresh Naans in the supermarket that are really quite decent when heated up. But it's fun to make Chapatis and if you have kids they can help you roll them out, and it's fun to watch them puff up on the stove top.
PS - If you get Jaffrey's "Invitation," the recipe for "Carrots and peas with ginger and Chinese parsley" is fantastic, as is the "Chana masaledar" (chick peas with onions, ginger, etc.).Replies: @Jack D, @Jim Don Bob
Thanks for the tip, Peterike2. Just got a copy off EBay for $3.97 shipped!
I love me the Intertubes!
As others have mentioned, the British were eating curry long before there were Indians in Britain to cook it, not because it was ‘vibrant’ and ‘exotic’ but because hot spices are a food preservative, which was a big deal in the time before modern refrigeration.
When people buy food, they have a really good idea of what they are paying and what they get in return, so it is silly to argue that they are being tricked.The type of haute cuisine you refer to with technical complexity and elaborate plating is not what mass market food service is about. And most restaurants including Asian restaurants are businesses catering to mass market needs, so that's not what they do. It's generally not hard to find luxury Asian dining or cook books if you want that.
On the original post, it is humorously hypocritical that curry is "proof" that immigration is no threat to a cohesive society in England, yet the curry shops won't hire Romanians because there is too big of a culture barrier that they don't speak Bengali.Replies: @Bill B.
Inside ethnic enclaves the food can be somewhat authentic but – and this is almost an IRON LAW of catering – if the majority of customers are not of the country of the cuisine then its quality will decline, often sharply.
This also happens to restaurants in the developing world that cater to tourists.
The notion that the market validates every dining choice is misconceived if customers are making purchase decisions in ignorance. A crap car that sells superbly because of misleading advertising and customer naïvety is in a market not fulfilling its function.
The notion that a vibrant food culture is a great boon in itself is as misleading as saying that the Out Of Compton crowd have enriched western culture.
Curry cooking. Just another job that native Brits won’t do.
Anybody else flash to Pimple Billimoria reading this piece?
I loved that show; it was by far my favorite show on television. Sadly the Food Network doesn't even show the reruns anymore, and you can't buy a DVD compilation because Japanese copyright laws prohibit it. Those sure are some good memories, though.Replies: @Triumph104
You can watch the original Iron Chef Japan on YouTube.