🍛Towards a Jewish Curry
What Makes a Curry Good — What Makes it Ours — and What Makes it Mine.
I’m an unabsahed curry guy.
Always have been. It`s in my DNA. Proud of it.
I didn’t grow up with Kartoffelsalat or Apfelstrudel.
Even though my mother came from a German family, our house smelled like ginger and turmeric, not dill and caraway. My father’s palate ruled the kitchen — Jewish Iraqi, Indian-influenced, heat-loving, deeply savory. There was no compromise. Our family food culture bent toward curry. And I was born into it.
Of course, I’ve looked beyond. My culinary curiosity pushed me outward — from jalfrezi to Thai curries, to Caribbean spice blends and Burmese coconut broths, to Malaysian Laksas.
I created a brand, a logo, and hosted curry tastings for strangers in my home.
Later, I studied European cuisine, ran restaurants in Switzerland and Germany, and cooked food that spoke in other languages. I now live with a partner who has a classic German palate — refined, minimalist, and not very spice-tolerant.
So I accommodate.
Still, and after all these years, when I think of food that feels like home, it’s curry. Always curry. Especially the kind you build from scratch — onion, garlic, ginger, dry-roasted spices, a layer of tomato.
The architecture of comfort.
1. So What Makes a Curry Good?
A good curry doesn’t have to scream. It doesn’t need to numb your tongue or overwhelm your senses. It’s not a chili-eating contest, and not a way to overcome inferior ingredients.
A good curry whispers. It builds in layers.
It starts with a foundation — onion, ginger, garlic — and from there, every ingredient knows its place.
Heat where it belongs.
Sweetness where it counts.
A pause between every note.
That’s the kind of curry I learned to make — and the kind I return to when I need a fix.
Recently, I came across a recipe from Nisha Katona, a lawyer turned cook like me and the founder of Mowgli Street Food, for a lamb curry with chickpeas and prunes.
I wasn’t expecting much — I thought I knew every variation of lamb curry by now.
But reading it, I had to pause.
Because this wasn’t just good.
It was familiar.
Not in a derivative way — in a deeply resonant one.
This was a curry that could’ve emerged from my aunt’s kitchen in Calcutta, or from the Rangoon Jewish Club’s Shabbat menu. It was British-Indian, yes.
But also Jewish. Even if accidentally so.
2. What Makes a Curry Jewish?
You won’t find “Jewish curry” as a category in cookbooks. But it exists.
And it happens to be the focus of my work.
I call it “Jewish curry cuisine”.
It exists in Baghdadi Indian kitchens, where kosher laws met Indian spice.
Where butter was replaced by oil. Where yogurt and ghee were skipped in meat dishes, or replaced with coconut milk.
Where dishes like murug and khatta soaked up the flavors of their new home — cloves, cinnamon, turmeric, green chili, fresh coriander, tamarind.
Over time, a distinct pattern emerged:
No dairy in meat dishes.
A savory-sweet balance: prunes, apricots, tomatoes.
Always start with onion, garlic, and ginger.
Warm spices: cumin, cardamom, cinnamon.
Heat dialed down, aroma dialed up.
It’s not flashy. It’s not restaurant food. It’s food for the Sabbath table.
For comfort. For memory. For quiet joy.
It’s a curry with a conscience. It`s not boring because it tells a story.
But it doesn`t have to tell the same story every time.
3. This Curry — and Why Nisha Katona Deserves Credit
Katona’s lamb curry doesn’t announce itself as Jewish.
But everything about it rings true.
Lamb and prunes? Straight out of a Sephardi pantry.
Chickpeas and tomatoes?
Familiar to every Baghdadi Jewish kitchen from Mumbai to Singapore.
Star anise? A bold touch, used often in Caribbean and Southeast Asian Jewish circles — and a nod, perhaps unintentional, to fusion without pretense.
No cream. No yogurt. No heavy chili. Just depth, balance, and an understanding that a curry doesn’t have to hurt to leave an impression.
She deserves credit — not for echoing Jewish flavors, but for showing how good food travels. Maybe, just maybe, its an expression of Bengali camaraderie.
She deserves credit reminding us that culinary memory isn’t linear. It loops. It resurfaces.
And sometimes it lands right where it belongs, even if the recipe never knew its ancestry.
4. Recipe: Lamb Curry with Chickpeas, Prunes & Honey
Serves 6
A slow-cooked, warming dish for Shabbat, Sunday, or whenever your spice memory calls.
🧅 The Base
6 tbsp neutral oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 large onion, minced
7.5 cm ginger, grated
4 garlic cloves, grated
1 tbsp tomato paste
Method
In a heavy pot, heat 3 tbsp oil. Add sliced onion and caramelize slowly. Set aside.
Add remaining oil. Hamis the onion, ginger, and garlic. Cook until golden-brown.
Stir in tomato paste and cook 1 minute more.
🍖 The Lamb & Spices
800 gr lamb shoulder or leg, diced
½ tsp turmeric
¼ tsp chili powder (adjust to taste)
1 tsp star anise powder (or 1 star anise)
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp coriander
1 tsp cinnamon
3 green cardamom pods
4 cloves
200 g chopped tomatoes
Method
Add lamb to pot, sear until browned.
Add spices and stir to coat.
Add tomatoes, simmer 10 minutes uncovered to reduce.
🌰 The Sweet & Sustaining
125 g prunes
1 can chickpeas (drained)
1–2 tbsp honey
2 tsp salt
400 ml water or broth
Method
Add everything to the pot. Stir.
Bring to boil, then simmer gently 60–75 minutes.
Uncover last 10 minutes to thicken.
🌿 Garnish
Reserved caramelized onions
Chopped coriander
Optional: thinly sliced green chili
Serve with paratha, basmati rice, or saffron pilaf. Add raita or chutney on the side.
…and of course, the printable recipe. Do try it at home….
lamb curry with prunes and chickpeas
5. Conclusion: Joining the Jewish Curry Culture Club
This isn’t about claiming territory. It’s about mapping memory.
Jewish curry is real — not as a museum piece, but as living food.
And this lamb curry? It’s one expression of that tradition.
A cross-border stew that tells stories even when it doesn’t mean to. It connects dots — between Iraq and India, between Shabbat and street food, between what we remember, what we adopt and what we reinvent.
That’s the kind of curry I want to share.
Not because it’s exotic. But because it’s tastes like our story.
And because if we don’t tell the story, who will?
I write about it to make sure its not forgotten.
If you like the idea, join the club
🎥 Postscript: A Taste of What Remains
A few days ago, my cousin Jael Silliman, a Kolkata-based scholar and author, sent me a 9-year-old video that quietly broke my heart.
For 900 years there has been a small Jewish community on India’s Malabar coast, living at peace with their Hindu, Muslim and Christian neighbors. It’s been a model of interfaith tolerance. But, as Fred de Sam Lazaro reports, the community has dwindled since the state of Israel was established and now one of the last Jewish survivors, who maintains the synagogue, says he plans to leave in a few years – for Israel.
The video follows a group of Israeli and American Jews visiting Cochin, on India’s Malabar coast — once home to a small but ancient Jewish community, where my grandfather hails from.
They gather for Shabbat, cook with one of the last Jewish men still living there, and speak to the synagogue’s aging caretaker.
The food is unmistakably Jewish Indian. Curry leaves, tamarind, turmeric.
The kitchen is humble. The ritual is familiar. The sense of ending is palpable.
As the caretaker says he’ll soon leave for Israel, you realize this may be the last time that particular Shabbat curry — in that home, on that street, in that community — is ever cooked again.
Watch the video below (it`s not long, but it will linger longer…):
Shabbat Shalom from Munich, from Cochin, or wherever you may be.
In a world full of turmoil, hatred and violence, I wish you peace.
May your table be full, your stories rich, and your curry just the right kind of warm.
– Elli
עליכם שלום
הכתיבה שלך נפלאה ומרגיעה, כמו אוכל טוב!