Durban curry

[Mark]

So I’m making curry tonight.
Being from Durban
I consider myself a master curry-maker.
That’s where I learned
to make a damn good curry.
I was named an honorary charou
for lunching often at Govender’s Curry Den
eating stuff like mango atchar, bunny chow
and curried chillies, fluently patter-bantering
with the fast-speaking brahs in their patois,
hey ekse doan choon like a onetime skaapie malemphy witou soeking a chillum bungi skyf, right?

Anyway, I never make the same curry twice,
there’s no recipe as such, just use whatever,
judge the quantities. taste and adjust.
I chop onion, garlic and scrape a little ginger,
some butter-chilli peppers, three bird’s-eye
chillies and toss into a cold pot. I grind some
coriander, cumin, jeera and cloves, cardomom, star aniseed,
a log of cinnamon bark, this and that, curry powder,
Nagaland spice, a dash of lemon piri-piri, it all goes in.
Add some chunks of chicken fillet, sunflower oil,
and start frying it up: it soon smells wild from afar.
I add a can of spicy onion and tomato, broad beans,
chickpeas, lentils, half a can of coconut milk. Yeah.

It’s easy to make 'ot 'ot. but I don’t want that,
just a slow glow of complex flavours
warm enough to trigger the endorphins.
I turn the pot down to simmer, and cook some basmati rice
with tumeric while the steamy spices waft from the stove.
I crack another beer and taste the mixture. Another chili, I reckon,
and two teaspoons of brown sugar and a sprinkle of sea salt.

Mm, this be good now, be even better tomorrow.


 

[indar]

Mm, this be good now, be even better tomorrow.

My sweetheart, born in the backwoods of Texas, says the old folks called that second day improvement "sumption". An Italian friend told me his family routinely made spaghetti sauce and didn't eat it until a day or 2 later. from the sounds of it I love your style of cooking, I love my own cooking. I no longer enjoy going to restaurants. I'm a Thai green curry fan: potatoes, chicken and coconut milk, mmm

I've retained my Minnesota accent Oh ja so ve're eatin high off da hog tonight then