malaguetas

and back in Kansas. [o picante indiano foi de caravela. "Collingham states in her book that the chili pepper figures heavily in the cuisine of the Goan region of India, which was the site of a Portuguese colony (e.g. vindaloo, an Indian interpretation of a Portuguese dish). Collingham also describes the journey of chili peppers from India, through Central Asia and Turkey, to Hungary, where it became the national spice in the form of paprika." da wiki] e saber que na Lello se entra mais para tirar o retrato do que para comprar livros. o milagre da dispersão. se fossemos embarcação, estaríamos agora a adornar perigosamente na direcção do eldorado, descontando mesmo o plopplop dos mergulhos.

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"She [Ms. Collingham] is a good postmodernist who scoffs at the idea of authenticity when it comes to food. One of her goals, in tracing the evolution of curry and the global spread of Indian cuisine, is to pull the rug out from under the idea that India, or any other nation, ever had a cuisine that was not constantly in the process of assimilation and revision. The very dishes, flavors and food practices that we think of as timelessly, quintessentially Indian turn out to be, as often as not, foreign imports or newfangled inventions. That includes chili peppers and tea.

What could be more Indian than chilies? Yet before the Portuguese arrived at the beginning of the 15th century, Indians had never seen or tasted a chili, a New World spice that Columbus called "pepper of the Indies." The heat in Indian dishes came from a red pepper known as long pepper or from the black pepper familiar in the West.

In addition to chilies, the Portuguese brought carne de vinho e alhos, or pork cooked slowly in wine vinegar and garlic. Local cooks in Goa, Portugal's trading headquarters, reinterpreted the dish. They fashioned an ersatz vinegar from tamarind, and threw in lots of spices, especially chilis. Thus vindaloo, a corruption of vinho e alhos, was born, and with it a new traditional Indian food."

(...)

"Curry is not, strictly speaking, Indian at all. It is a British invention. From the Portuguese, the early British traders learned to apply the word "caril," or "carree," incorrectly, to sauces made from butter, crushed nuts, spices and fruits that were then poured over rice. (In various South Indian languages, "karil" or "kari" referred to spices for seasoning or to dishes of sautéed vegetables or meat.) Eventually, the word evolved into a catchall. "Curry became not just a term that the British used to describe an unfamiliar set of Indian stews and ragouts," Ms. Collingham writes, "but a dish in its own right, created for the British in India."

(daqui)