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The Great Indian Curry Hack
As a broke immigrant college student, I was heartbroken by US Indian food. So I learned how to make my own with ingredients I could find.
It was orange, with an oil slick on the surface. In its murky depths were four submerged triangles. It was a paneer butter masala, and it was $7.99. Reader, my heart broke.
It’s been over fifteen years since I darkened the doors of The Jewel of India, but I’ve never forgotten that feeling of betrayal, when, as a broke student, I finally splurged on a meal at the sole Indian restaurant in the tiny New England town where I’d decided to get an American education. I had hitherto eaten Indian food in Asia and in England, and this dish was outside all parameters of my experience. It was curiously sweet, yet mystifyingly bland, and I could’ve soaked a roll of Bounty in all that oil. Worst of all, for that $7.99, I could’ve bought bread and peanut butter and jelly and Oreos and an apple.
I walked home frustrated and hungry, unable to figure out what, specifically, was wrong with the dish. Indian food was not supposed to be so oily, so tasteless and so depressing. I was sure I could concoct something better — even though I’d never cooked Indian food before.
