h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Excellent work on the Curry guide so far- it makes my mouth water and stomach whimper just reading it.

You mention that the 'food heritage is shared across the Subcontinent', which is true as far as I know, but there are some notable subsections of curry that deserve consideration as separate styles. These are perhaps a little obscure for a Beginners' Guide, granted, and are typically not available at the standard and much-loved curry-house, but they are worthy of including at some stage in case the intrepid curry-devourer would like something a little off the beaten track.

I allude, of course, to Goan and Keralian food, which comes from the Southern end of India (please correct my ropey geography if necessary), and is a bit like South-East Asian food, i.e. lots of green curries (Oh yeah! that reminds me - do things like Thai green curry etc etc deserve a mention?) and seafood that *isn't* a waste of time. One of the weirdest examples of Keralian tucker that I've tried was pumpkin curry (I kid you not) which was, frankly, deathly boring.

Good places to try these out (apologies if you aren't able to do so) are Malabar Junction on Great Russell Street in London, or the Palms of Goa on Charlotte Street. I think there are better Goan places about, but I can't remember any offhand.

I hope this is useful information, and I'm not repeating anything anyone else has said!

Thanks, N7, that's a good point. I didn't know much about Goan food but was fascinated when Rick Stein went there for his last "food from the sea" series. Huge prawns, and fresh fish just slashed open, packed with herbs and roasted in a little chilli oil. It sounded delicious!

In this article I was really going to try to help the novice going into an Indian restaurant in the UK, where sadly such delicacies are not likely to be on the menu - but perhaps, yes, I should include Thai curries.

As you can see, this has been around a long while, and for the last four years I've lived in various countries (Germany, Holland, Ireland) where spicy food is a rarity. This article was started in a fit of nostalgia, but now I'm really missing the chance to do some background research for it!