Mellow Yellow

When I was growing up, the most exotic dish my mother served was chicken curry. This was in the ‘70s long before Thai restaurants popped up on neighbourhood corners or magazines offered step-by-step instructions for grinding your own curry spice blends at home.

Mom made her chicken curry with big spoonfuls of Sharwood’s mild curry powder and lots of cream and served it with up with Uncle Ben’s white rice and a half dozen or so condiments that included bottled Major Grey chutney, chopped almonds, cashews, shredded coconut, juicy mandarin orange segments and plump slices of banana. My job was to help set these out in little bowls in the middle of the kitchen table in an uncommon configuration that I thought gave our dinner a festive air.

On curry nights, what I looked forward to most, maybe even more than the meal itself, was the story my parents dished up alongside it for us kids. I don’t remember the first time they told it but it became a ritual to ask them, between big saffron-hued spoonfuls of chicken and rice, “Tell us the story about this curry?”

On cue, they’d recount the narrative of their courtship. The place was the Bahamas. The time: the tense few weeks in October 1962 that would become known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In those days, my mom was an Air Canada stewardess (this being the more carefree pre-“flight attendant”, pre-terrorist era of air travel). My dad was an equally carefree British engineer working in Nassau. The drama playing out in Cuba a few hundred kilometres away grounded my mom and her fellow crew members. While the world waited with baited breath on the brink of nuclear war, my mom and dad did what any respectable young jetsetters in the 60s would do. They partied. Of course, my parents didn’t use those exact words when recounting events for us kids. Their version was far more romantic.

Mom met dad one night in a crush of guests at the home of British racecar driver Sterling Moss. Dad took mom out to dinner at the posh restaurant the next night where the meal turned out to be unpalatable. The waiter gave them a tip on a more authentic local eatery. They left and ended up in a place called the Rum Keg Room with a delicious plate of chicken curry in front of them. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Mom always maintained that her “Cuban Crisis” curry, as we came to call it, was a re-creation of the dish she and my dad shared that night and, over the years, the narrative seldom wavered. Whether the details were true or not, in the constant re-telling, the story became fact -- a permanent part of our family history.

It was only years later that I realized my childhood curry reflected culinary influences that had more to do with England than the Caribbean.

The word “curry” is thought to be a loose English translation of the Tamil word kari, meaning spiced sauce or gravy. When the British colonized southern India in the 17th century, they were seduced by the exotic cuisine but didn’t immediately grasp the subtle differences in the spice blends that Indian cooks used to create different dishes. Curry quickly became the default term for all the fiery sauce-based dishes the British tasted regardless of the variations in spices, seeds and herbs they contained.

As Britain’s interest in India grew, so did the British fondness for Indian food. By the late 1700s, the English had begun to produce the pre-mixed, pre-ground curry spice powders for commercial sale that remain popular today despite the recent interest among some home cooks in grinding spice blends from scratch.

The British love of curry is now more than 400 years old but much of what is now served up all over the UK bears little resemblance to the intense, complex dishes the Brits first tried on the Indian sub-continent centuries ago. Like love, it was inevitable that over time curry would evolve into something milder and more familiar to the British palate.

I don't doubt my parents' account of their curry dinner in Nassau but I realize now that the beloved family recipe it inspired was more likely born in the southwestern London suburbs where my mom and dad lived as newlyweds.

Despite the intensity of its name, Cuban Crisis Curry is an offspring of that long-ago marriage between Indian cuisine and British tastes – a mellow yellow reminder of an exciting first encounter.

Cuban Crisis Curry

2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 lbs skinned, de-boned chicken breast cut into 1-inch cubes
2-3 Tbsp flour
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger (or 1/8 tsp. ground)
2 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, diced (optional)
1 red or green pepper, diced (optional)
1 to 1 ½ cups chicken stock
2-3 Tbsp mild or medium curry powder
½ to ¾ cup whipping cream

Coat chicken cubes with flour, and shake off excess. Heat oil in a large pot or skillet over medium heat. Add chicken and sauté until golden. Add onion, garlic, ginger and celery (and carrots and peppers if using) and cook until vegetables are tender. Add curry powder, stir in and cook one minute longer. Add chicken stock. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 10-15 minutes until chicken is tender and cooked through. Stir in cream and heat through. Serve hot over white basmati rice (Uncle Ben’s Converted White Rice if you really want to go old school) with condiments on the side.

Condiments

Shredded coconut
Cashews
Slivered almonds
Tinned mandarin orange segments
Sliced banana
Chopped green onions
Chopped parsley or cilantro
Mango chutney or major grey chutney
Crystallized ginger
Sultanas/raisins
Chopped tomato