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Currying flavour
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Curry leaf is an indispensable part of the Indian kitchen
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PHOTO: V. SREENIVASA MURTHY
INCREDIBLE VARIETY Curry leaves flavour everything from curries to buttermilk preparations
Curry leaf is indispensable to south Indian cuisine and is native to the Indian subcontinent. Indians migrating to other lands carried the tree with them.
The earliest mention of the leaf is from Tamil writings dating back to the 1st century C.E. The cuisine of the Tamil people makes the most extensive use of curry leaf and the rest of India has learnt how to use this leaf from them. In fact, even the Hindi word for curry leaf is derived from a Tamil word, kari, which means a spicy sauce. The botanical name, Murraya koenigii, derives from two 18th Century botanists: the Swede Johann Andreas Murray and the German Johann Gerhard König.
Curry leaves flavour curry, chutneys, dal and sambar, pickles, soups, meat, fried foods and even buttermilk preparations. The leaves are used fresh, and their aroma spluttering in hot oil fills every south Indian household at least twice a day. Sambar and dal are impossible without curry leaves in the spluttering mix of spices. In Sri Lanka, the leaf flavours beef and chicken curries. The dried and powdered leaves, when lightly toasted, are used in spicy leaf powders.
Curry powder, a British invention, is actually a mixture of different spice powders and has very little to do with the curry leaf. Just to make the confusion worse, the curry tree is not the same as the curry plant: it is a European herb.
One hundred gm of fresh curry leaves contain around 110 Calorie. Curry leaves are among the richest sources of micronutrients, antioxidants, and carotene. In fact, the carotene content of curry leaf is so high that a State Government in the south recently ordered the inclusion of curry leaf powder in the midday meal provided to children in anganwadis. Curry leave are used in ayurvedic medicine as a digestive. They are also used to increase the appetite of convalescents. Curry leaf mixed with limejuice is a folk remedy for morning sickness.
RAJIV M.
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