We seem to have changed our Saturday evening meal from pasta-based low meat content dishes to low meat curry. Real curry. The kind of hot curry that makes you feel your ears are bleeding.
I was doubtful at first because for years and years I’ve avoided chilli and such like spices, comparing them to the taste and smell of very old, unwashed woollen socks. Back then we lived in Brighton and were strict vegetarians, and one day Graham became tired of the kind of Euro-pap vegetarian recipes that were around then and asked about Indian food. I wasn’t too well-informed about Indian vegetarian dishes so I went to a high-class Indian restaurant in Hove, explained our dilemma and our innocence, and asked them to do a special menu for the two of us, introducing the very best of Indian cuisine to our under-educated palettes.
It was a memorable event. We were attended to in a small, private booth, and waited upon with the greatest care. With each new dish the proprietor came along and explained the making and the history of it. If I remember right the feast came in something like fourteen courses and by the time we were finished our little tummies were full to bursting, and very, very content.
Even so, as we wandered home through the dark streets of Brighton to our nice little villa in Poet’s Corner (yes, really) Graham decided that Indian food wasn’t for him. Too foreign, he said, and far too hot. I sighed, put aside my own tastes and stuck to him like very loyal glue. English was good. Italian was better. French was the best. Asian food, no, it was not part of our world, and hasn’t been for nigh-on thirty years since.
And now we’re tucking into sizzling hot curries at least once a week.
Last night was a chicken Balti recipe, with extra turmeric and garlic.
“That was totally, ridiculously delicious,” I said.
“Not bad,” said Graham, “but I could do with being a bit hotter.”
“You’ll have to study nuclear physics to get it hotter than that.”
“Fair enough.”
So, next Saturday, if you observe what appears to be a miniature nuclear cloud hovering over West Wales, don’t worry about it. It won’t really be nuclear. It’ll just be an extra hot curry sauce. With extra hotness.
