Curry in a Hurry

Cooking is meditation. That pulsating whack-whack-whacking of your knife against the cutting board pulls all the focus from myself to ... that fricking' shallot sliding around the board (PITA!). If you think about it, it's the antithesis of computer programming, where your sole job is to eliminate repetition in clever ways.

So when I found the Edinburgh New Town Cookery School I was like, "Oh yeah, a spiritual retreat!" They had a class I couldn't refuse: Curry in a Hurry. For £60 and 1.5 hours of time, they promised to up your curry game, sending you back with a meal as good as takeaway.

"If you fail, just pick up Indian on the way home," Amy says, full of encouragement. "I'll never know."

Curry is Serious Business

The English, like the Americans, have made pizza their #1 takeaway favorite, mostly due to younger eaters. The old guard stands resolutely in the fish and chip camp.

But the Scottish prefer Indian food. It is the #1 takeaway choice, eking a slim margin over the #2: Chinese food. The West End and University of Edinburgh sections of town are full of Indian grocers and restaurants.

The word curry covers such a broad spectrum of dishes, it is the equivalent of stir fry or chop suey in Chinese cooking. Some use it as a synonym for curry Indian food itself, saying "Let's get curry takeaway" when they're thinking vindaloo or Tandoori.

But curries pop up in many world cuisines. Edinburgh New Town Cookery School teaches day-long seminars on curry, including variations from Taiwan, Burma, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Every curry just gots to have:

• Spicy gravy!
• Rice!

By spicy, I don't necessarily mean hot, just flavorful. It's gotta hit your mouth like a tossed-in bomb.

You think of the British as being reserved, polite, very subdued. Curry is the opposite of that.

Cooking as a Spirtual Exercise

Amy is partly to blame for my cooking obsession. Back 13 years ago when I moved into Amy's house, I unceremoniously pushed her out of the head cook position. It was nothing really conscious. Amy is a fine cook. But she had cooked for herself for 6 years prior, since her husband died, and she didn't really like the job.

For me, cooking was continuity. I had cooked for my first wife Kathy for almost 20 years. Kathy was not a cook at all. But she was a strict vegetarian and I was not. The choices were either (1) starve, (2) make two dishes every night, (3) find some middle ground. So I became a flexitarian and got in the habit of making serviceable vegetarian dishes that I could eat. I built up a standard set of recipes over the years: Tempeh Reubens, Tofuna Sandwiches, Sloppy Joes with TVP, Not Dogs wrapped up in Pillsbury Crescent Rolls.

After Kathy died, these dishes were comfort food to me. They made me feel somewhat normal.

Fast forward a few years, and Amy and I are living together. One day she pulls me aside and said, "The food you cook is blah. It's not bad, it's just blah."

At that time, 80% of my repertoire was from the Moosewood cookbooks. As much as I love these volumes - the simplicity, the unpretentiousness, the illustrations even - I realize now how transitional they were. They were a product grounded in the 1970's and 1980's. Their goal was to create new vegetarians. And they knew that venturing too far from the mainstream would just give ammunition to someone looking for a reason to grab a package of Hamburger Helper. Not too much spice. Not too many weird ingredients (weird meaning "unAmerican"). A vegetarian cookbook you could pass off as a community church cookbook.

Anyway, I took that to heart. I won't get too far into my testimony. I know there are really stellar cooks reading this blog, and we all have our journey. We could each go on for hours, I'm sure. Suffice it to say I learned some really valuable lessons over the past few years.

• Technique and ingredients are more important than timing and process. (For you computer programmers, think "Agile Method of Cooking").
• Taste and adjust as you go.
• When consuming any dish, wherever the location and situation, ask yourself the question, "How did they do that?"

These little platitudes aren't hard, but they require a lifetime of practice. They were what I wasn't getting from the Moosewood Cookbooks, who were very intent on getting that dinner on the table with a minimum of fuss.

But What About the Curry?

The Edinburgh New Town Cookery School is laid out like Great British Baking Show except cooks share prep stations and hobs (= cooktops in UK).

I shared a station with Angela. In the class, you had a choice between vegetarian and chicken - I went the default meat as most people did, but Angela did the Butternut Squash option. Her son and husband were expecting dinner at a certain time, so she cut a few corners. But she was a very meticulous chopper. Her knife skills were impeccable, and I was a little jealous. I wield my knife like a mugger with a switchblade.

We made Ayam Kapitan, a/k/a Captain's Curry, a Malaysian curry. It veered more toward a Thai curry, and it had a few ingredients I had never seen before:

• Kaffir Lime Leaves, which were frozen bright green, almost spinach-coloured. Of course they tasted like lime, but with an edge that's hard to describe. I find this ingredient in Yottam Ottolenghi recipes a lot, but have never been able to find it in the States.
• Galangal, a ginger-like root with a much milder kick.

The instructor led us through the recipe, stopping at key points to preach some interesting side lessons. For instance ... do not buy lowfat coconut milk. Lowfat coconut milk does not use some magical process that removes some of the fat. It is just coconut milk mixed with water. 90% of the can is water. You are better off buying regular coconut milk, using a little bit and freezing the rest. In fact, in a can of regular coconut milk, once you have poked your way through the yummy white layer and scooped all that out ... you can throw the rest away. It's just water. Water from your tap is cheaper.

Anyhoo, the instructor says "Give your curry a taste," I plunged my tasting spoon into the pot, picked up a spoonful, blew and gave it a quick taste.

OMG. Best damn curry I ever et.

It had everything you want in the taste department - sharpness (what Brits call sourness), a little sweetness, umami, and a beautiful melody of spices. Not one flavor overpowered any other. It was not spicy. I sometimes make the mistake of overamping the spiciness to compensate for other things. And in fact we had the option to throw more chiles in there, but I opted not to. This turned out to be a good decision.

I packed the curry up in flimsy tinfoil take out containers, and practically ran down Queen Street. The containers were hot, and I had to flick my fingers in and out to keep them from burning. I made it the mile home.

The real test: Amy thought it was good too. Even though I had a plan B, in the end I didn't need it. My curry was just as good ... no, better! ... than takeaway.

I have found my calling. Curry for breakfast. Curry for lunch. Curry for dinner. Curry for a bedtime snack. Curry all day long, y'all!.