Curry is more ancient than we thought

Curry may be one of the few truly worldwide cuisines. Although most people think of curry as being Indian food, every time a trading route has become popular throughout history, curry took the opportunity to travel it. Whether it was traveling with Muslims in the 1000s on their pilgrimages or sailing the high seas in the 1800s with British and Portuguese trading ships, curry has spread and evolved almost like a living organism.

But the original curry, the proto-curry if you will, turns out to be far more ancient than anyone ever suspected. Archaeologists have found that people living at the height of Indus culture 4,500 years ago cooked with a distinctive spice blend featuring ginger, garlic, and turmeric - a blend of flavors which is still at the heart of traditional Indian curry blends today. While the Egyptians were building the pyramids, the Indus culture was building a nation that would not be matched again until the rise of the Romans several thousand years later. And they were doing it while eating curry.

Recent advances in microscopy have allowed researchers to analyze the tiniest fragments of evidence in broken shards of pottery to find out what was cooking. By examining the molecular structure of the remains inside dirty dishes, they were able to detect the signature of spices we still use today.

This means that curry is not just one of the most popular dishes in the world. It also will go down in the record books as possibly being "the oldest continuously prepared cuisine on the planet."

Mm, makes me hungry for some garam masala just thinking about it! One of my favorite slow cooker "recipes" is to mix cubed skinless chicken breast, a can of coconut milk, and several healthy scoops of curry paste. Cook on Low for 6-8 hours and serve over either rice or steamed chunks of potato. Delicious, filling and just the thing for a dreary winter afternoon!