Sunday Rest: curry. Word Not To Use Today.

 Apparently white people mustn't use the word curry.

The food blogger Chaheti Bansal thinks they shouldn't, anyway. The food of India, as she rightly says, is complex and wonderful, and she feels that using the word curry - not itself an Indian term - to describe any kind of spiced stew is disrespectful both to the sub-continent and to the cuisine. Foreigners should, she believes, learn the proper names of the different dishes.

I'm afraid that the problem is even worse than that, because round here in England the word curry is used for more or less any spicy Asian food. There's the katsu curry, for instance, which is based on the cuisine of Japan. A Panang curry is from Thailand.

On the other hand, it's not as if anyone walks into an Indian Restaurant, sits down, and says bring me curry! We're all aware that there are many different dishes from which to choose.

Still, if it makes Chaheti Bansal happy I'll stop using the word.

Well, I will if she's listening, anyway.

Sunday Rest: curry. My Collins dictionary says that this word came in the 1500s from the Tamil word kari, which means sauce or relish.