Fijian curry

Friendships Across Cultures

As I said in Australia we had a great friends of different origins, races and skin colour. One of them were Fijians Naveen and Mere. They thought me how to cook curry, Fijian style.

Alan, Naveen and me

On the photo you can see another guy, great person Alan Panambalama from Ceylon (Sri Lanka). He explained to me that curry on tamil language means big pot. What we buy today in western shops, mixture of spices called curry in reality do not exist in Asian culture.

Alan was a great guy. Always ready to party. Great singer and entertainer. He was eating everything spicy, but spicy hot, and always arguing that Ceylonese cuisine is the hottest. More than Mexican, Thai or Indian. I think it was a bit of his folklore and it was funny. Sometimes during the dinner, he will eat 7-8 hot-hot-hot chillies. In time I get used to hot food, but I never managed to eat more than 3 chillies. His crisps were spice, like with a lollipop of our Mexican friends. Coming from Europe, from Mediterranean- north European home cooking cuisine it was all new to me, funny and interesting.

Naveen was always of great spirit and ready for cooking, eating and partying. His wife Mere was a big friend of my wife Snjezana and almost every Saturday where we were there was a party in Sydney.

Fijian Club Adventures

Once we went with them to a Fijian club where their original food was served. Folk music and dances (I think they call them hula dance, like Hawaii and other pacific islands). I remember three girls singing, great voices and one of them was apparently original member of Destiny child, I was told.

I was really lucky to meet such a down to earth great people.

Today I lost contact with them. I have nothing of social media things and if you do not email me or call me you can not contact me.

Cooking the Perfect Curry

And now something about cooking curry…..

According to my friend Naveen, for proper curry you have to make your own spice mix. You start with the one tea spoon of masala, ginger, paprika, turmeric, coriander, cinnamon, chilli and salt.

In a stone mortar you place some fennel and cumin seeds, cardamon, brown mustard seeds and some cloves. Grind them to have coarse mash.

Cloves actually you do not have to put in mortar.

In the heavy pot put some oil and heat it. Make the paste of your spice mix by adding some water and then fried it.

Add the mixture from the mortar and continue frying for another minute or two.

Add your meat and vegetables.  What is nice about this curry there is no rules what kind of veggies you can use or meat. What ever you have in the fridge is fine.

This time I used roughly chopped onion, carrots and celery. For meat I put some beef. After about 60 minutes the dish was finished.

About 20 minutes before the dish is cooked, I added some roughly chopped potatoes.

Because my wife is not a big fan of hot dishes, I left the chopped chilli on a side.

It is not compulsory to serve it with yogurt, is more Indian style then Fijian, but we like it. For a finishing touch I sprinkled on top some finely chopped spring onion.

A Taste of Togetherness

Around this meal we had many nights of great fun, dancing and drinking. It is easy to make, you can use any kind of meat, fish.

This time I used potatoes, but you can use also batatas or serve it with rice as a side dish.

Dobar tek – Bon Appetit