Curry Rice

food picture

Curry rice is one of the nation's most favorite dishes. It is standard fare on restaurant menus of all kinds of restaurants.It was introduced into Japan by British businessmen who brought it from India.

Once again one of the foods the Japanese has chosen proves to be beneficial health-wise. The curry powder blocks have some 30 to 40 spices in them, each spice with some medicinal value. Tumeric, which gives curry its yellow hue, aids digestion and keeps the liver strong, as one example.

Curry rice is another one of the fairly recent meals added to the Japanese menu. It started for Japan with the publication in 1872 of a cookbook of western dishes. The term "curry rice" was coined by William Smith Clark who had come to Japan to teach, was shocked at the underfed nature of his students and urged them to eat meat and curry rice.

In 1877 a restaurant opened in Tokyo that sold curry rice along with katsuretsu (deep-fried cutlets) and bifuteki (steak). It was, though, rather expensive costing 18 times the price of a plate of soba (buckwheat noodles). At the present time Japan ranks second only to India in its annual consumption of curry powder.