I HAVE always been fascinated by curries. I think Indian food expresses itself best through curries. In an Indian curry, you can get all the five tastes that Ayurveda talks about: the bitter, sweet, salty, sour and astringent. These come in the form of chillies, tomatoes, onions, ginger, dahi, that is what a good Indian curry is all about. It is about complexity and balance. About colour and consistency. The French say that their sauces in Continental cooking are very important. We take our cuisine to a higher degree. French cuisine is about one dominating herb. It�s very simple. Look at the number of spices we utilise in our food, in our curries especially.

When I wrote my book, 50 Great Curries of India, I did it for an international audience. In the west, they think Indian food is very downmarket. Travel agents in Europe when they are selling a nation like China, say, �China has opened up, the big attraction is 21 meals in 21 days!� And they believe that if you spend 21 days in India, you will only get curry! The perception in the West is that curry is a dish. That is why I called my book 50 �great� curries of India. I wanted to show the endless variations. I wanted to tell the west that curry is not a dish. I published the book with 50 colour pictures accompanying the 50 curry recipes so that readers could see the differences. It is like the ethos of the nation served on a plate. And there are so many ways to express this.

I started collecting the recipes for my book during my travels for the Taj Group of Hotels. I worked on it for ten years. And after I actually decided to do the book, it still took me a good three years. But that�s because I was working for the Taj full time and could only use Sundays for the book. I only put those recipes in the book that I saw being cooked before me. I like to see the fire, feel the thickness of the pot, I like to stir the curries. And most important, I love the tastes. I must have gone through hundreds before deciding on the 50 that have made it into the book.

In India, the book was published by Rupa & Co. But I had a separate edition published in New York by William Sonoma. And one by Simon & Schuster for Canada, South Africa, Australia, Pakistan, in which the pork recipes were excluded, and UK. The book has also been translated into Swedish, Finnish and German. I have always had a passion for food. When I cook, I don�t do so for my own consumption. I am fascinated by cooking and like to see how it turns out so that I may present my food to the world. I would like to change the image of Indian food for us and for Indian abroad. If you go to see eating out trends abroad, the average cheque in an Indian restaurant is the lowest. Western food is the highest and it is followed by Chinese. That�s because Indian food has a low image. We Indians do not think our food is gourmet cuisine. You see a foreigner outside his country will always try to find a restaurant serving his own cuisine. Ever notice the number of Chinamen in the Chinese restaurants of India? But Indians treat Indian food with disdain abroad.

Indians fancy they are too high-up in life to eat Indian food abroad in a restaurant. This mindset must change. The best Indian chefs have left India and are working abroad, but what they are creating there, no Indian is interested in knowing. An Indian abroad will only go to an Indian restaurant if he is entertaining a foreigner. There is just no pride in the local cuisine. The cuisine will need a lot more books and a lot more restaurants and people�s support if it is going to break the myth that Indian food is only curry. And that curry is a dish!

I have many favourite curries, two or three of them are fish curries. I adore one vegetarian curry that is made in the region between Goa and Mangalore, say near Alibaug, in which the predominant spice is the East Indian bottle masala. It is hot and spicy. Another curry I like comes from Imperial Bangalore. It is a yellow fish curry, the fish used is the Mapala, the Sear fish. And I also like the Parsi fish curry, this is the yellow curry, unlike the green one which they make and serve with rice and call Ras Chawal. But the one fish curry that goes down unbeaten in my book is the one that the great Chef Miguel Arcanjo Mascarenhas (Masci!) of the Taj in Goa used to make for his own lunch every day!

Curries are also the largest selling food dishes in Japan. They mix flour as a thickening agent in their curries. South East Asians live on curries. From Pakistan to Japan, people eat curries, so this is not just an Indian dish. I don�t want to say any one particular curry is best, but I do think the Chettinad curries of Tamil Nadu are underrated. I find them pretty phenomenal. South Indian food is not just idli-dosa, you know.
Click for recipe