INDIAN COOKERY.

Putaruru Press, 2 June 1926, Page 2

INDIAN COOKERY.

SOME STRANGE CUSTOMS. Mohammedan and Hindu. A native of India would be horrified to see the way some families will mix a pudding in the same dish that somebody has washed his face in. Dirty as they are in some of their ways —that is, dirty according to our ideas —all the natives of India are scrupulously clean where their food is concerned. You could see to shave in some of the 11 chatties/’ as their brass utensils are called. Before and after taking food the native will rinse his mouth and sedulously scrub his teeth with a piece of wood that he chews into the semblance of a toothbrush. Catering for a team such as the hockey players now visiting New Zealand is no child’s play, and would drive a European caterer mad, but these imperturable men take it all as a matter of course, and what would seem senseless pcrnickitiness and useless waste of time is to them no more bother than the unfolding of his table napkin is to a man of the Occident. Like Pavlova, these hockey players bring their own chef with them, so .there will be no fear of compilations with hotel-keepers or the proprietors of boarding-houses who are strangers to the peculiarities if Indian food and methods of eatiug. The Mahommedans eat goat or sheep flesh, but it has to be from a male animal, which is slaughtered by . cuttingoff the head with a sword. In their ceremonial connected with the slaughter of beasts for food they somewhat resemble the Jews. On no account will a pious Mahommcilnn cat any but the correct meat —what the Jews call 1 ‘kosher”—and even during the late war you would see a string of sheep and goats at the tail of the Indian army. The Hindu, on the other hand, will cat nothing that has drawn the breath of life, and his principal dish is “curry and ghi.” We call it curry and rice, but with the Indian rice is included in the name “curry.” Ghi, it is perhaps superfluous to explain, is the clarified butter made from the milk of * he water-buffalo. When the buffalo butter is brought in you are aware of the fact as soon as the. door is opened, being nearly as noticeable ' as a good healthy Gorgonzola. Curry powder in bottles is unknown in India, the various herbs being ground, or crushed between grooved stones, fresh every morning. The peppery ingredient in a

curry is chillies, which if used in what j the hardened Anglo-Indian considers ! the right proportion would make a New i Zealand \s eyes water for a week. ! One of the rather strange features | connected with the eating habits of the Hindu is the fact that should so much j as the shadow of a European infidel fall j across the food while it is being pro- J pared-the whole lot is thrown out to | the dogs, and everything begun over j again. “I have- been chased myself [ for the price of replacing a meal my shadow had ruined, ’ 1 said an old Anglo- 1 Indian to a "Star" reporter recently, J when chatting about the peculiarities ] of the compatriots of our visitors. The I Gurkha is a merry little soul, who does 1 not seem to care much what lie eats —or I drinks. \ It is not likely that the culinary 1 operations of our visitors will meet the gtaze of any • strangers while the trip lasts, but if it should the whites, would be struck by the heaps of 11 chupatties ’ ’ which arc consumed. This is the native bread. It is made of freshly-ground I flour, something like our wholemeal, j mixed without any leaven. In making ! the flat cakes, about ten inches in dia- I ■ meter, the native cook slaps them back t and forth between his hands, until in the end he turns out something ia little less tough than a round of sole-leather. * . Should any Europeans happen to light on the natives when there is cooking toward, they should remember that the Indian considers many things ijnjiortant that the white man would 1 1 consider quite trivial, and that no man of good sense or common politeness would think of intruding into their j kitchen operations. —