Indian Food and a Short History of Spices

Indian Food and a Short History of Spices

Indian Food and a Short History of Spices
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 6 to 8
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	9.42

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		biryani, cardamom, cloves, cuisine, cumin, dosa, long-held, lucrative, mace, orange-colored, peppercorn, Roti, subcontinent, tandoor, tandoori, travelogue
	content words:		Sri Lanka, In Tamil, Spice Islands, Molluca Islands, Middle Ages, Marco Polo, Il Milione, Far East, Christopher Columbus, Though Columbus

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Indian Food and a Short History of Spices
By Vickie Chao

¹     When it comes to Indian food, the first thing that rushes to most people's minds is probably a simple, five-letter word - curry. Curry is thought to have derived from a Tamil word called "kari." Tamil is a language spoken by the Dravidian people of southern India and northern Sri Lanka. In Tamil, kari means sauce. It is basically a mixture of spices and herbs. This mixture (called curry powder) can change its ingredients from one region to another. It can be mild. Or it can be spicy. Regardless of what goes into the concoction, there is one thing for sure. When cooked with rice, meat, fish, or vegetables, curry powder gives the dish a unique, savory taste. It makes some of us want to eat more!

²     Of course, Indian cuisine is more than just curry. Roti (a round, flat unleavened bread), dosa (a thin, folded pancake), tandoori chicken (marinated chicken chunks skewered and grilled in a type of clay oven called tandoor), and biryani (flavored, orange-colored rice cooked with meat or vegetables) are all popular items that we can find in almost every Indian restaurant. What the four courses, along with the rest of Indian dishes, have in common is that they owe their flavors entirely to a wide variety of spices, such as cumin, coriander seeds, pepper, cloves, and turmeric.

³     Using spices in cooking has had a long history, dating as far back as 52,000 years ago. Though we cannot know for sure how primitive men came across this practice, it is quite possible that their discovery was by chance. Ever since then, spices have played a vital role in our diet. In earlier centuries, spices were considered very valuable commodities. Thus, whoever was involved in trading seasonings was destined to be a rich man. This extremely lucrative business was long dominated by the Arabs who transported their merchandise to Europe via Egypt. To protect their profits, the Arabs were always very vague about where they got their supplies. When asked, they would invent crazy stories to convince the listeners that they had to go through a lot of dangers to obtain the spices they were selling. They never told them that they got their goods from India, China, the Spice Islands (present-day the Maluku or Molluca Islands of Indonesia), and other nearby regions.

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