Game for curry the old-fashioned way

Nov 21 2009 by Angela Upex, The Journal

Could Northumberland claim to be the birthplace of British curry? The owner of one of the North East’s top Indian restaurants believes so – and he’s putting the dish back on the menu 260 years after it was first published to celebrate National Curry Week and help raise money for disadvantaged children. Lucy Hammond reports.

CURRY must be one of the most misunderstood – and mis-cooked – dishes of all time.

The most popular restaurant dish in Britain served with varying degrees of success in around 10,000 curry houses, arguments over its preparation and authenticity have been raging since it was first introduced from India nearly three centuries ago.

Should it be hot or mild? Should the spices be ground fresh or stored in a jar? Should a proper curry be left to cook slowly or can it be made in a matter of minutes?

Whatever the answers, today’s curries would be unrecognisable to Hannah Glasse, the woman credited with putting together the first known modern recipe for “Currey the Indian Way”.

Her formula, published more than 260 years ago in her bestselling book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, took Georgian England by storm and cemented her reputation as the domestic goddess of her day.

London’s smart set couldn’t get enough of the newfangled dish from the East that used exotic spices to tingle the tastebuds.

The recipe was the start of what has turned into a long and enduring British love affair.

What is amazing is not that the cuisine has stood the test of time, however, but that a small rural corner of the North East can lay claim to being the birthplace of a style of cooking that has become a British institution and ranks second only to roast beef as our national dish.

For Hannah Glasse was born and raised in Hexham, Northumberland, and while she wrote the Art of Cookery after moving to London, her original 1747 recipe for Currey the Indian Way is a testament to her comfortable, idyllic country upbringing, with cooks advised to use rabbit or fowls as the meat of choice.

Hannah’s recipe has unfortunately long been confined to the history books.

But for one week only one of the North East’s top Indian restaurants is putting Hannah’s original dish back on the menu to celebrate National Curry Week – and help raise money for BBC’s Children in Need.

And chefs at Raval restaurant on the Gateshead side of the Tyne Bridge have also come up with their own money-raising 21st Century Asian fusion dish in the spirit of Hannah Glasse which they hope will see the North East, rather than the Midlands, hailed as the undisputed birthplace of the Great British Curry.

Like Hannah’s original recipe, Raval’s new take uses the finest Northumberland game – in this case pheasant – and hand-ground spices, and will also be available to order until November 28.

Raval manager Avi Malik has pledged that the full cover price of both dishes will go to Children in Need.

Rabbit and pheasant make for an unusual curry marriage to modern palates more used to beef, lamb and chicken drowned in gloopy, spicy sauces. But Raval – which is tipped to become only the third Indian restaurant in the UK to gain a coveted Michelin star when the updated listings are announced in the new year – doesn’t conform to people’s image of the typical Asian eatery.

Since opening two years ago, the modern Indian cuisine offered up by Raval has had food critics, chefs and discerning diners alike reaching for the superlatives.

Indeed, it was a panel of celebrity chefs who dined there earlier this year, following judging for the North East Culinary Trades Association Chef of the Year competition, who first mooted Raval for Michelin status, after being impressed with the restaurant’s fresh, innovative and exciting menu.

Among them was top Tyneside chef Douglas Jordan of Jordans in Ryton, Gateshead, himself a judge for food guides, who says Raval is undoubtedly among the best of its ilk and can stand alongside London’s Tamarind and Benares restaurants, currently the only two exponents of Indian cuisine in the UK to hold Michelin status.

Dining at Raval, with its panoramic view over the River Tyne to Newcastle, for the first time can come as a shock to those used to the Anglicised, run-of-the-mill fare served up by most Indian establishments.

Lobster soup with coconut milk, tandoori scallops, salmon and sea bass are all on the menu. Now game is joining the list of ingredients.

But Avi says that while currying pheasant and rabbit may raise British eyebrows, in India, game is widely used.

And his kitchen staff – who are among the best available from India’s top hotels and come to Raval on work placement to broaden their culinary education before heading home – find nothing unusual in using it.

“Hannah Glasse was very Indian in her approach to curry,” Avi explains. “Her original recipe is more like an aromatic stew and contained only two spices – coriander and pepper.

“No fenugreek, no turmeric, no cardamom and no cumin. The ingredients mirror what would have been available in 1747, but the way the recipe is written and put together reflects that less is sometimes more, which is a very Indian way of looking at food and in keeping with what we believe here at Raval.

“It is amazing to think that the first documented British curry recipe was published as long ago as 1747. But what is more amazing is that it was written by a woman born and raised in Northumberland and that her recipe could claim to be the mother of all the curry recipes that have followed since..

“We at Raval feel Hannah Glasse’s original British curry recipe deserves to once again be on the menu, and for modern diners worried about their health, it ticks all the right boxes. Rabbit is a very low fat, healthy meat.

“We have also come up with what we hope will turn into a modern-day Indian classic – a North East curry that is in the spirit of Hannah’s original but has been brought bang up to date for modern palettes with marinated and spiced pheasant, a plentiful and seasonal meat sourced locally that Hannah would have been familiar with.”

It is fitting that Raval has chosen Children In Need as its charity of choice. Hannah is believed to have been the mother of 11 children – only five of whom survived. Born in 1708, she was the illegitimate daughter of a prosperous lawyer and was raised by his family in Hexham, where she witnessed good living and tasted the food of rich country folk.

At 16 she married a soldier of fortune, John Glasse, and moved to London where they fell on hard times. Drawing on her idyllic childhood in a wealthy Northumberland household, she started work on The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy in 1746 to make ends meet. With advice on everything from roasting to preserving and recipes including plague water, Mock Turtle soup and Currey The Indian Way, it was a huge success.

Hannah’s curry recipe was most likely gleaned from a correspondent in India. By 1773 at least one London coffee house had curry on the menu.

Hannah was ahead of her time in spotting a niche for a book of simple instructions, accessible ingredients, easy recipes and practical help with weights and timings that also preached thrift.

She began writing in 1746 convinced her project would succeed. She observed in her introduction to The Art of Cookery: “I believe I have attempted a Branch of Cookery which Nobody has yet thought worth their while to write upon...”

Hannah made her fortune when the book was published — although she was later declared bankrupt and ended up in debtors’ prison.

She was released in 1757 and went on to write two more books, The Servants’ Directory and The Complete Confectioner, before her death in 1770, but neither was to enjoy the success of The Art of Cookery which was to remain at the top of the bestseller list for 125 years (unfortunately she had sold the copyright to it before going to jail).

Curries were to come on apace after Hannah‘s recipe first introduced to this wonder of the East a public hungry for gastronomic variety.

Her recipe, however, would have been unrecognisable to robust Victorian diners who preferred their curries “hot as the hinges of Hell‘s front door.”

It would certainly have disappointed the king of curry-makers Colonel Arthur Kenney-Herbert, whose recipe for curry paste had nine ingredients.

And with its delicate reliance on peppercorns and coriander, it’s certainly a long way from today’s spicy concoctions.

But Avi says: “Rather than arguing over what makes the perfect curry, perhaps the discussion should be on whether curries as we know them would ever have seen the light of day without the intervention of a woman who was born as far from India as it is possible to get.”

Raval, Church Street, Gateshead, NE8 2AT, (0191) 477-1700, www.ravalrestaurant.com

HANNAH GLASSE’S CURREY THE INDIAN WAY

Two fowls or rabbits, cut into small pieces, three or four small onions, peeled and cut very small, 30 peppercorns, large spoonful of rice, coriander seeds browned over the fire in a cler shovel and beaten to a powder, tea-spoonful of salt, fresh butter, pint of water.

Mix all well together with the meat, put all together in a saucepan or stew pan with a pint of water, let it stew softly till the meat is enough, then put in a piece of fresh butter, about as big as a large walnut, shake it well together, and when it is smooth and of a fine thickness, dish it up, and send it to table; the sauce is too thick, add a little more water before it is done, and more salt if it wants it.

You are to observe that the sauce must be pretty thick.