I worked in Uganda for a while - plenty of Ugandan asian food. None of it was eye watering hot. But much of it was South Indian vegetarian, maybe that's the difference.
By the way it does my head in when on TV cooking programmes they use the word spice to mean chillie - and spicy to mean hot, Chillie is a spice but not all spice is chillie (or hot). Ghrrrrr...

In general, an Indian friend of mine said most of the British "Indian" dishes are known about over there but most of what we eat over here falls into occasional/party/feast offerings over there; the everyday dishes are far simpler and far less reliant on huge quantities of meat. They simply don't shovel down conical plates of, say, tikka masala with parathas, pilau rice and lord knows what on a daily basis. You couldn't live on such rich food on a daily basis - for one thing most of them couldn't afford it, and secondly, you'd die with that sort of calorific intake and unbalanced diet. It's full of cream, yoghurt, ghee, creamed coconut, creamed nuts and other saturated-fat-laden stuff.

Same in China. What we eat over here would be the richness of food served at, say, a wedding or family occasion over there.

From documentaries about food history, it is almost universally accepted that tikka masala was invented in the UK, possibly Glasgow.

Tikka is marinated pieces of chicken. That is authentic Indian. It was a UK restaurant that made chicken tikka masala in to a dish.
Reportedly because the customer felt his tikka was too dry so asked for some sauce and so the chef knocked up a sauce with some tomato sauce and spices.

I travelled in Northern India for several weeks.
Not once did we encounter anything recognisable in a UK curry house.
I later did a ten week evening Indian cookery class supervised by a very knowledgeable Indian cook.
One week we made an "authentic" vindaloo.
It was absolutely nothing like the "traditional" curry house vindaloo.
The descriptions "Madras", "Vindaloo" and "Phaal" are simply anglicised measures of heat and, as has been said, will vary enormously between establishments.

Some weeks back I was astonished to notice a "Phaal" in the Indian ready meals at Sainsbury's. I find all supermarket curries much of a muchness but I bought the Phaal out of sheer curiosity. No way could it be ranked with the palate wrecking creations served in curry houses. I would describe it as reasonably hot.

Perhaps he wasn't from Goa or perhaps he was just a crap chef.

Nope. Wrong.

Female who doesn't drink lager here I'm afraid but love hot curries

I agree with Dhansak though, lovely!


Isn't an authentic vindaloo actually completely different to our version of a vindaloo, though? I might be wrong, but I'm sure I read that an authentic vindaloo isn't hot like ours is and different flavour too.

In agreement with the tikka massala being invented in Britain though!

i think a traditional vindaloo is still quite hot but is traditionally made with pork and has a wine based sauce , neither you will see in many vindaloos over here

i do like the occasional really hot curry but i do have a preference for a pathia or a dopiaza

Ahh that might have been it, then

Mmm pathia. I had a prawn pathia yesterday, it was amazing.

Yes, that's right. It's still very hot, but it does taste different from curry house vindaloo. The slow-cooker recipe I use was given to me by a Portuguese friend and uses pork loin or shoulder, red wine vinegar and LOTS of garlic. The name comes from the Portuguese for wine (vinho) and garlic (alho).

To be honest nobody knows for sure where it was invented, there are different theories.

I've heard it could be either but always thought personally it was invented in India and brought over here. The type we eat these days has probably been adapted from an Indian recipe, if anything.

I don't eat vinaloo's often but the best I've ever had was homemade using this recipe.


Use as much chilli as you like
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/porkvindaloo_89999

It can also be tweaked to make it into a kebab (Souvlaki)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souvlaki

Decent curry houses wouldn't do that, it means they are just dumping in chilli or cream