hi mamta and readers. i have just been looking at the recipe for chicken madras on site and i have a question. in two of my cookery books there is a recipe for madras but both recipes dont use garlic of ginger. i watched a video on youtube recently where a lady was cooking chicken madras and she left out the garlic and ginger. is it traditional to not use garlic and ginger in madras or not? i know it doesnt make any diffrence because the result is good either way. i am just curious.

thanks sid

I've just googled "madras recipe" and out of the first 10 only 2 didn't use garlic and ginger, but they were made using jars of curry paste !

Steve

This is what I think;

1. Garlic and ginger are personal choices; many people do not like the lingering odour of garlic, so avoid it. Did you know that many vegetarian Indians do not put garlic in their food? Not many members of my family in India eat garlic and even onions are not added to everything, like they are in UK. Even those that do eat garlic, only use it occasionally.

2. Ginger is sometimes used as dry powder (sonth or saunth) and listed as such.

3. Garlic and ginger can be expensive in certain parts of India, so many recipes have evolved without them. Many are cooked even without onions, which can also shoot up in price from time to time during summer months, especially in the south (Madras, or Chinnai as it is now known, is in south India).

4. Many Indians do not eat onion/garlic, because it is Tamsic (bad) food, though most non-vegetarians (meat is also Tamsic) will eat it, meat being a Tamsic food itself.

5. More people eat ginger but not garlic, because ginger is a Satvic (Good) food (look up tamsic and satvic foods on the google).

There may be other reasons!

Surely 'madras' just refers to the spice blend (usually fairly hot) used to create a madras curry. The actual other ingredients, such as the meat (if any,) vegetables and other flavourings are up to the individual cook, depending on their religion, customs, wealth and region - although presumably there must be some inspiration from the cooking of Madras/Chennai towards the end balance of tastes of the final dish??

Winton

As elsewhere, people cook what is available in their region. Until recent years, vegetables, including onions, ginger and garlic were not easily available or too expensive in this part of rather hot India especially during summer months. So people used what they had. You will often find that traditional curries from the region, and indeed rest of the northern India, are often cooked without tomatoes, which were only available during winter months until recently. My mother or rather my father who had trained in such things used to bottle tomato pulp (also peas) when they were cheap. This pulp was only used for ?curries? for special occasions or for visiting guests. Tomatoes are still quite expensive and often not very tasty during summer months, even in the north India. Southerners used vinegar, tamarind and coconut etc. in their curries, because those were easily available there.

Madras is a restaurant invention, it is not an Indian curry. Certainly, there are classic curries from Tamil Nadu, but none of them are known as 'Madras'.

'Madras curry powder' is another invention, which may have originated in TN, but for non-Indians, or Indians abroad.

Maybe its worth going through an 'Indian restaurant' menu and giving the interpretations. I'll start a new thread.

Curry is something that has spices and a little gravy/sauce, as far as I can ascertain. It may or may not have come from the word Kari, meaning just that. In UK, and now rest of the Western world, the term ?curry? is given to any Indian dish that has spices. Curry powder is supposed to be a mix of various spices, making life for less adapt cooks easy. Perhaps Madras Curry Powder was invented in Madras, to suit the Palate of ?foreigners? and to make life of their cooks/memsahibs easy? Who knows!!

South Indians (where Madras is), do use a lot of spice mixes and perhaps that gave someone the idea to make a Curry Powder and then some clever marketting person named it after a well recognised city? I have a friend who has lived in Madras (Chinnai) for a few generations. She and her mother make a few powders, which are often used as a garnish or as a chutney of the north, to spice food up.

Sambar Podi

Idli Podi

Rasam Podi

Dosai Milagai

Idli Podi

Curry Podi

Milaga Podi

Gun Podi (powder) or Kandi or Paruppu Podi

Pappula Podi made with Roast chana dal and spices

Generally speaking, dishes are known by the name of the main ingredient and the style they are cooked in in India. Most Indians will vary the amount of individual spices according to the dish they are cooking, their personal taste and according to what is available locally, along with mixes like Garam Masala or Chaat Masala and a few others. I have however noticed that the word 'curry' is now beginning to appear on Indian menus, at least in Delhi. When I visit Indian super markets on my twice yearly trips to India, I find many young people buying boxes of ready-made spice mixes for various speciality dishes; Tava masala (for vegetable bhajies), Chana masala, Karela masala, pasanda, karahi stir-fry, stuffed vegetable masala and so many other named ?curry? mixes. Whole shelves are full of these boxes. So Indians do use ?curry? mixes these days, though they don?t use the word 'curry powder' and certainly not Madras to describe all sorts!