Many Malaysian hearts love curry, and that explains why you often see these fans crowding ‘Mamak’s Corner and Banana Leaf Restaurants. Eating with curry is easy, cooking curry is relatively easy too. Anyway, I’m not intending to be the chef of the day by providing you some cooking recipes here. My cooking recipe will remain as a secret, hehe. Well, I’m going to give you more than that because I’m about to reveal the secret of making delicious curry to you.
Let’s start our curry with the choice of pot because the idea here is that, you certainly need a pot to cook curry. Talking about pots, they come in various sizes. Sometimes, you got an opportunity to choose them, sometimes you may not. However, you can’t give up cooking curry just because you didn’t find the right pot. That’s silly. Pot is like our life. Destiny decides your life. If you are given a small pot, you might have a simple life. If you are given a better spacious pot, you might have an average middle class life. Even better, if you have all sizes of pots, you are so called affordable. Now, these pots only suggest our current capability and they are always changeable in future. You might be able to afford better pots in future. While waiting for better pots to arrive, we can make learn to make out curry sizzling in existing pots. Remember, tip number one, pots never going to affect your curry because if you’re a good cook, a pot will just be a medium to prepare the curry.
Now, let us turn on the fire and let the oil heat. Oil is our choice, too much will make the curry oily and if too less you can’t fry the onions. When cooking curry, it’s all about tolerating, it’s about devotion, and it’s about love. When we have elderly parents, we consider their health problems. When we have spouses, we try to prepare healthy meals to avoid them from health problems, though not many spouses may understand our intention. When we have children, we want our food to provide them enough nutrition to grow healthy. So, choice of oil represents tolerance because we are always our life with other peoples, namely worldly relationships.
Then, onions, kids are not going to like them but this Allium cepa plays a big role in preparation of healthy curry. Let takes a simple one, it protects us from common cold though I bet onions never brag that they have anticancer and antioxidant properties. Curry is nothing without spices. I call these onions and spices as responsibilities. Everyone, from kid to elderly, have our own responsibilities. In fact, our life is running on the basis of responsibility. I used to go to school because I was told to go to school by my parents. I suffered there for a quarter of my life, and still suffering in university. Some of my graduated friends are lamenting about their career life. My kid friends are lamenting about homework and my uncle-aunty friends are complaining about daily medicines. Hectic, nobody likes responsibilities but they are good as they make our life move on purposefully. Just like the spices and onions, they appear to be pungent at the beginning, but at the end they save my curry.
Main dish affects my curry too. The way of cooking fish curry is different than of chicken curry. I cook what I can afford, sometimes what I like. Often poor families survive on dried anchovies’ curry. I can say that sometimes it is the best curry ever, better than more expensive mutton or chicken curry. Main dish means love, and it explains that love is better shown on action than words. Love for family members, friends and special ones are priceless. It emerges through sincerity right from the bottom of heart. With love, my curry will always taste better to my loved ones, no matter even when it has only vegetables in it. P.S I’m referring to my favourite ‘Venthiyam curry’.
Curry is impossible with curry powder and there are a big variety of them in the market. Which one to choose? Choice is yours and often the choices are very much individual. I might feel this is better, and you might think this is so not your taste. Whatever it is, we need curry powders, that is the reality. Curry powder is like perception. Everyone has different perception about life and things in life. There is no right or wrong perception, but our life is dependent on our perception. Sometimes it is to come out of our ‘perception’ shell and explore more about the truth of other’s perception. It will enrich our life and lead us to understand others better.
Cooking perfectionists do exist. They want their curry to be as perfect as possible, that they hate other people to interfere their curry business. Yes, I agree that they can make the best curry, but something might still be missing there. I guess it is the fun! Imagine cooking with all the mess here and there and the whole curry session end up in major clean-up. So what? I get satisfaction out of it. My curry might not be the best of the best, but I made my cooking partner happy. I’ve assured him or her, that he or she, hmmm not bad at all. I like to hear when people praise, who doesn’t. I instill confidence in young children that there are good at something. At times, our curry is about making others happy. The satisfaction is guaranteed to be greater than making ourselves happy.
Last but not least, don’t miss the cheapest ingredient yet the most important one which is the salt. Your curry might smell very delicious, but when you taste it and find out that, argggh, it’s tasteless; your curry is almost worthless. Beware to much can murder your curry! The right amount makes your perfect curry perfect. Now, salt is like problems in life. Without problems, life is almost meaningless, in colloquial saying, ‘no kick’. Too much of problems will lead to depression. The best way is yet not to let problems conquer our heart. Remembering Lord as the Doer helps really a lot in dealing with problems.
So what is actually curry? Curry is our heart. The ingredients are our physical and emotional surroundings. We all are actually cooking our curry daily. Experiences make our curry taste better. My curry is very simple, I offer it daily to friends and family. Some appreciates it, some don’t. When they appreciate it, I feel happy. When they don’t, I feel sad because I’m not a saint but I don’t get overwhelmed by that. I know Lord is always a big fan of my curry and He never forgets to visit my Restaurant. Ever grateful for His Grace.
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