When I lived in the UK, I often find myself purchasing Indian food and order takeaways. However, I had some Indian house mates before and the food that they cooked always smell different. I'm not talking about quality, because I haven't tried their food yet (it's theirs) but to my nose it always seemed like Indian food in the UK used a lot more curry powder than it should have. Is it just my nose going crazy, or maybe the way it's cooked is different ? I know that it's not a problem with the spices, my house mates also bought his stuffs from the same store (Morrison's if you're interested).
That's true, actually. I have always found that while in the US, I only associated real Indian food with the smell of curry. However, from what I've heard, in India they use a lot of different spices. While curry is a main one, there are lots of others that are used, and the food is quite different there.
Indian food cooked by my housemates always had a smell similar to Thai food to my nose. There seems to be a lot more nuances and a lot of sweet flavor in the recipe. The curry smell in some food in the UK is almost too overbearing and it limits the taste quite a bit, which is such a shame.
Really? I wonder if what your housemates were cooking were actually Indian dishes. To me, Thai food and Indian food both have distinctive smells which are not at all alike.
I think to myself that a lot of the time when a cuisine is taken to a different country, it changes a bit. For instance, a good example is Mexican food here in the States. It's not really the same as "true" Mexican food in a lot of places -- there's a lot of Tex-Mex style cuisine going on. So it might just be that it's a more British take on Indian cuisine. A lot of places here that serve curries too are probably not as spicy as they would be in their home countries of origin.
For the time that I was in India, I went to quite a few restaurants. I've always really liked Indian food, but that was in Canada. When I was in India the places that I went to had very nice food! I believe on was called New Delhi. Such nice atmosphere and it's a must to visit.
My country is very close to Thailand (1 hour flight) and I can tell you that Thai food is not at all similar in Vietnam and Thailand. As for the cooking, I think it's more to the fact that he used a variety of spices in his dish. Thai cooking, for example, use more coconut milk and less pepper than they do it in the UK.
