“Thank you for your tea.”
“I just tried it.”
“It has a very good taste and smell.”
As a proper tea nut, this is the kind of WeChat message I’m used to sending and receiving.
But this was odd. I hadn’t given any tea to my colleague’s girlfriend. So her message made no sense.
Then I remembered. Yes, I had given them some curry leaves earlier in the week.
With the huge minimum order of curry leaves purchasable on Taobao, I had given half to the only other person I know nearby who loves Indian food; my vegan colleague. Evidently, I hadn’t explained the leaves’ identity well enough. We men are very good at not explaining.
And it was funny. It was funny because it was harmless. Uma Thurman’s mistake in Pulp Fiction wasn’t funny. But this was funny.
Curry means a lot to me. Just as North Americans have a yen for Mexican food, we British crave Indian curry, and not just as the spice kick that completes our bland Anglo-Saxon diets; these cuisines are realms of comfort and curiosity.
But, as with British-Chinese food, British-Indian food didn’t quite prepare me for the real thing. From the crispy fermented dhosa pancakes for breakfast to the sumptuous dhals, there was something “extra” to the Indian food I had in Andhra Pradesh. I eventually realised that this something is curry leaves.
Yes, I too was unsatisfied with the name. “Curry leaves” sounds like “various leaves suitable for flavouring curry”; it sounds like “curry powder” But I was wrong; curry leaves come from the curry tree, which owned the name first; that’s how foundational this leaf is to Indian cuisine. Don’t ask me why it’s so under used in UK curry houses.
It’s actually a citrus tree. Knowing that explains in part its flavour and fragrance. There’s nuttiness, too. But it’s enigmatic; naming this leaf doesn’t conclude its mysteries. Buying a batch online in China, I worried that the dried version would be less good. But, after half an hour’s cooking, these leaves had already enabled my first dhal to speak.
Actually, when my colleague’s girlfriend (who is also a much-valued friend) pronounces a drink “good”, we listen to her. It was she who introduced the excellent coffee-cherry tea to our office, meriting a whole Strainer article, a full 2 years ago.
So I made myself a brew.
The leaves don’t look ill-at-ease in a drinking glass. A full-tasting drink requires a similar quantity of leaves as tea. And despite the fragile thinness, they impart flavour for longer than the equivalent camellia sinensis. Very good flavour it is, too. A sweetness a little like liquorice or lotus-leaf tea. No caffeine, as far as I can tell. Since that first experiment, I’ve enjoyed it on two more Autumn evenings. I will again.
My immediate reply to my friend highlighted a funny mistake. But this was itself a mistake. We are all perhaps a little too clingy to our branding of leaves as poison, medicine or sensation. Whether a leaf is suitable for smoking, cooking, chewing or brewing is perhaps a question worth asking ourselves again from time to time.
Curry-leaf tea is a damn fine drink.
