Forget curry powder

 That jar of curry powder on my spice rack is not going to get replaced when it’s done.  As a holiday present, my kids gave me a class in Indian cooking with Chef Vinita Jacinto, a professionally trained chef with decades of experience teaching Indian and similar cuisine.  In a three-hour session at a demonstration kitchen in Berkeley’s gourmet ghetto, a few doors from Chez Panisse and across the street from the Cheeseboard, we 19 students made three curries — Paneer Matar Masaledaar, Shahi Navratan, and Dahiwale Aloo — plus a yogurt dish (Raita) and a batch of Basmati rice.  After we made them, we ate them.  They were wonderful.  In the question session, I learned that “curry” — which I thought referred to meals made with curry powder — really just means “sauce.”  As for curry powder, Indian cooks wouldn’t be caught dead with any of it on their shelves.  “Curry powder” is a generic blend of spices put together by cynical Indian merchants for British colonial civil servants returning home.  The English gentry wanted the “taste of India,” without having the culinary knowledge to custom-blend the spices appropriate for each dish, region, and season.  In genuine Indian cuisine, said Chef Vinita, each cook blends and prepares spices according to her (or rarely, his) tradition, locality, family, season, and mood.  In our class, we used mustard seeds, cumin seeds, nigella seeds, asafoetida, chili powder, paprika, coriander powder, cumin powder, turmeric, garam masala (itself a blend of cloves, cinnamon, pepper, and cardamom), ginger, garlic, cayenne, and of course salt and pepper.  So, in with mortar and pestle, and out with the powdered vestige of British colonialism.  (It is convenient, though!)