Adding curry spices to canned pea soup, and other tales from a Durbanite abroad

When I first heard the title of this book, I thought, “Well this is a no-brainer, I adore both of these things.” 

Curry and Bread is a collection of stories, memories, observations, lists and just plain random ponderings all about author Pravasan Pillay’s experiences with (mostly) food. Some chapters barely connect to food, but like an aftertaste on the tongue it’s always there. 

Pillay grew up in the Durban township of Chatsworth, an area once designated for Indian people under the apartheid-era Group Areas Act, where trotters and sheep’s head curry is a delicacy (for good reason), and you can find the best spice-laden foods everywhere from market stalls to your neighbour’s kitchen. 

Now living in Sweden, he finds himself adding spices to his canned pea soup to resemble a dhal, and it comes out pretty close to what he’s hankering for. Just don’t tell the locals what he’s up to. Your secret is safe here, sir. 

Throughout his book, Pillay teaches many valuable life lessons. Think how to correctly eat (and share — a delicate dance indeed) a bunny chow, why a pilchard sandwich (not breyani) is actually the perfect beach food, how a good crab curry could ruin a first date or save a relationship, and how Indian Aunties are undeniably out to scar children by ensuring that there is never actually any ice cream in a freezer packed with leftover-laden ice cream containers. 

He has an ability to take a vague thought about something as arbitrary as a lone chip, dropped the night before, and turn it into an entertaining anecdote. It’s a fabulous skill.  

I thoroughly enjoyed Pillay’s humorous quips and comparisons. I laughed out loud, and chortled and chuckled many times while reading. In praise of the melt-in-your mouth quality of Ghost Pops, for example, he writes: “A Ghost Pop will melt down faster than a middle-aged woman in Woolworths when she finds that avos are out of stock.” 

Aside from laughing, two things happened when I began reading Curry and Bread. The first was that I almost immediately craved Indian food. The second was that I recalled being concerned when planning a trip to India in 2012 that I might get over Indian cuisine and long for some respite in the form of other foods. 

As it turned out, I ate curries multiple times a day and I never did get enough of it. I devoured my way across the country through a wide array of (mostly vegetable) curries, too many butter chicken dishes (available mostly for tourists), delectable golden brown street food morsels and every thali I could get my hands on. My favourite part of all of this was mopping up the remains of any dish with delicious, flaky, buttery paratha. So, yes, curry and bread and I are great friends.

Some foods have a correct context, a time or a place to be eaten. If you know what to order where or from whom, you can’t go wrong. You’re unlikely to ask a top chef to make you slap chips or a fry cook to prepare an 11-course chef’s tasting menu. 

During the aforementioned trip to India, I once foolishly ordered a steak. I can only attempt to blame this on youth because it really was very stupid. Cows are sacred in India, so it’s most likely offensive to the person you are ordering from and it is highly unlikely to be fresh, farmed locally or any good at all. I ended up having a very interesting chat with my waiter, having said that I would happily pay for both dishes but could I please order something else. He explained that I would probably be best off ordering vegetable curries in India because the majority of the population was vegetarian and I’d end up with the most delicious food. He was not wrong. 

I still adore vegetable curries, even though I suffer severe side-eye from my dad (you might have heard of him) when I order in his presence. I can’t count the number of times in my life he’s feigned a very worried look and said, “You’re not going vegan, are you?”

I revert to my theory that you should order contextually. In Durban, you cannot go wrong with a mutton curry. As my Indian tour guide Raghu told me, though, “you don’t see any sheep in India, so I would not order it even if it was on the menu”. 

Fortunately for Pillay, and all who love a mutton curry, this is not the case in South Africa. I met a couple from Durban in Kerala who were visibly and audibly very, very disturbed by the lack of lamb in the country. They were, they muttered many times, looking forward to going home. 

This desire for familiar flavours is echoed by Pillay throughout his book, though less as a complaint and more of a nostalgic longing for foods from home. While he hunts down spices in Sweden and amends his soups and sandwiches to suit his requirements for deliciousness, he still pines for homemade pickles from home and the sandwich from a takeaway joint that transforms chips, cheese and chilli sauce into a delicacy that cannot be emulated anywhere else (“the grease never lies”). 

In case you haven’t figured it out already, sandwiches play a major role in this book. I lied, a third thing happened throughout my reading experience. I learned that I have robbed myself my whole life of the joy of stuffing fluffy slices of white bread with leftover curries and pickles in various forms. I will be righting this wrong for the remainder of my life. 

When I returned from my six-week adventure in India, I found myself craving curry, and my immense enjoyment of it never stopped. I feel the same craving after reading this book. I’m not sure if I want that curry sandwich, a bunny chow, cheese and corn samosa or puri and patha first. I just know that I’m craving all of this and more. I’ll take your recipe book next please, Pravasan. 

Until then, I’ll be making the one recipe found in Curry and Bread: a baked beans curry. I’ll be having it with bread, of course. DM

Follow Rebecca Jackman-Derman’s book journey on Instagram:  @writeherereadnow

Rebecca Jackman-Derman is a writer and Bookstagrammer and all-round book nerd. She has worked in journalism and public relations, writing about anything and everything. She is now attempting to immerse herself further into the world of fiction by writing her own novels. When she isn’t reading or writing, she’s cuddling her kids or a cat, travelling or dreaming of travel, cooking or baking.