Let's go for a curry!

I'm always looking for perfection in cooking. Most of my cooking is "very good" to "excellent", but I'm always striving for "perfect". It's the only way to pay hommage to the ingredients, which are a gift from nature and earth, and a symbol of the tender care of the farmer. I really believe that treating perfect ingredients with less than the utmost respect, should be listed as a mortal sin. I don't care if you've just bought your first Jamie Oliver book or if you were top of your class at the California Culinary Academy.

A few times in my life I have cooked something that was absolutely perfect. For example a sauteed gooseliver with leek, acacia-honey and balsamic vinegar, served as a little "spoon-appetizer". A pity it was only a mouthful! I started with the perfect ingredients: a homemade veal-stock, the best gooseliver from the Périgord-region in France, organic leeks, delicious acacia-honey and great balsamic vinegar. Given the quality of the ingredients, there wasn't a whole lot that could go wrong, but since I was cooking for my best friends I added the mysterious seventh ingredient: love. I tried to make this dish again, two years later, but then I added too much of the eighth ingredient: routine, and it just wasn't the same. Still very good, but not perfect.

One of the things I want to try to perfect is a curry. Even though many may not consider this "high cuisine", there is just something about the perfect blend of spices, the perfect texture and Indian taste that is mesmerizing. Of course there are many different kinds of curries, but if they are perfectly made, they are like expensive perfumes: complex, layered, mysterious, enticing, sexy.

Even though I'm no expert, I believe that the perfect curry should consist of different layers of taste. There should be a base of ground spices, with which one makes a paste or a "masala". This paste is fried in oil, to release the etherical oils. The oil should not be too hot, otherwise these precious oils will burn. I think one should use a neutral tasting oil or even butter. Olive oil, with its complex tastes of its own, should not be used in this case. After the main ingredients (meat, vegetables) have been added and coated with the masala, one should add a second layer of herbs: the non-crushed and non-grinded ones: star-anise, cinamon, cardamom-seeds, cloves, coriander-seeds, chili's, etcetera. And only at the last moment should one add fresh herbs, such as coriander or basil. I like to tear these fresh herbs with my fingers, instead of cutting them on a board.

The perfect curry is so perfect, that you would want to eat it forever. It is the ambrosia of the Gods!