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Curry for a crowd

  • Indian spices

    © oleksajewicz/Shutterstock

    Photo of Indian spices

  • Vegetarian and non-vegetarian labels in India

    © kotra/Wikimedia Commons

    llustration of a greeen vegetarian label and a brown non-vegetarian label

Curry for a crowd

Curry for a crowd

You probably eat different food at different times of the year. And you definitely eat different food at different times of the day. Would you eat meatballs, potatoes and carrots for breakfast? Not many would here in Norway. What you eat doesn’t just depend on how much money you have, or what part of the world you live in. Food is also part of your culture, part of your identity.

As a teenager in Norway, you probably have bread and cheese, salami or jam and a glass of milk or orange juice for breakfast. Or maybe you have some cereal or porridge. That’s a fairly standard breakfast in northern Europe. If you were in North India, you would have roti (a flat, whole-wheat bread) or paratha (a kind of flatbread with several layers). These are served with vegetable curry and pickles. In South India, on the other hand, you would get dosa (a pancake) or idli (a small cake) made of lentils and rice and served with hot chutney. You can get Western-style breakfast some places, but that is not what most people in India eat.

Indian food is known for being hot and spicy. In fact, 70% of all the world’s spices come from India. Did you know that cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, pepper and other spices have been traded in Kerala, in South India, for over 5,000 years. At one time they were almost as valuable as gold.

Spices are a very important part of Indian culture, and they’re used for medicinal purposes, as well as to add flavour to food. Some spices can stop food going bad so quickly, which easily happens in a hot climate. They can also make the most boring vegetables taste absolutely delicious! This is very important in India, which has the highest percentage of vegetarians in the world. They also have a very useful system to show whether the food you buy in shops is vegetarian or not. A green dot means the food is vegetarian, a brown dot that it’s non-vegetarian. Maybe this should be introduced in Europe, too.

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