The Curry Chronicles
What would a 100-year-old rendang recipe taste like? Join chef Devagi Sanmugam in the first episode of our new cooking series.
Episode Summary
Curry powder is now commonly sold in pre-mixed packets, but in the past, people used to bring their spices to spice mills to have them ground, before mixing them at home. Well-known chef, cookbook author and culinary consultant Devagi Sanmugam talks about what life was like back then. She also whips up a quick beef rendang using a recipe from 1920, cooked with curry powder and eaten with spaghetti.
Recipes
Chef Devagi made Mrs Kinsey’s “rundang” recipe from The Mem’s Own Cookery Book. First published in 1920, the book contains 420 budget recipes based on local ingredients, such as lady’s fingers and lentils, and local spices like curry powder, cloves and ginger.
Check out how Chef Devagi made small but critical tweaks to Mrs Kinsey’s recipe that made it vastly more like the rendang we know today.
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Related Books
W. E. Kinsey, The Mem’s Own Cookery Book (Singapore: Kelly & Walsh, 1929).
Devagi Sanmugam, Indian Heritage Cooking (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Cuisine, 2011).
Elizabeth M. Collingham, Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi Srinivas, Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).