Keen for a bunny? After this you will be.

The Indian Consulate in Durban has confirmed that the city has the highest concentration of Indians – 800 000 – of any city outside of India.

It’s not surprising, then, that curry is a common dish served and eaten by many of KZN’s occupants.

But the thing with curry served in that region of South Africa is that, as Ishay Govender-Ypma suggests in a Munchies article, it’s a little different from what you’ll get over in India itself:

[L]oved fiercely by locals and rarely so by Indians from India, feared by those unfamiliar with the complex layers of spices, the glossy sea of orange-tinged oil that floats to the top, the flavor [sic] profile that can be described as linear and unrelenting—it burns from the moment it hits your tongue.

But it really is oh so delicious.

So how did Durban curry come to be? Well, the Indians who arrived by steam ships between 1860 and 1911, working on the British-owned sugar cane plantations, weren’t able to access the ingredients needed to make what they knew.

Let’s take a look:

Unlike many of the fish curries of South India, there’s no coconut milk or fresh coconut in a Durban fish curry, nor in any other South African curry. While coconuts are prevalent in the region, they certainly weren’t abundant or available in the quantity needed for daily cooking.

Laborers [sic] escaping harsh economic and social conditions in India left through the ports of the south and soon found themselves toiling in the sugar cane plantations and railway stations, living in conditions akin to slavery. In spite of the challenges faced in this foreign land—beatings and worse for minor transgressions and an understandably strained relationship with the indigenous Zulus who refused to acquiesce to British demands—they clung onto their religions and their food culture. Perhaps they considered it a small price to pay for a different hell they left behind…

What we do know is that on the Durban plantations, dishes were adapted, maize split into shards to used as “mealie rice,” a rice substitute when it was scarce. Coconuts were reserved for prayers and baked goods for feasts; Indian vegetables grown from seeds stashed away in pockets and trinket boxes en route from India, sprouted in the sub-tropical soil that mimicked home to a degree.

A soft or “melting” local varietal of potato made its way into curries, stretching the dishes to feed many. And what curries did the newcomers whip up? Meat was always an extravagance—even in the 70s and 80s, it was largely a once-a-week dish, if that. Popular Durban curries included (and still include) “running” or Zulu chicken (a mature free-range hen whose egg-laying days are over); mutton tenderized by marinating followed by long cooking; sheep’s head and trotters, often sold together; tripe, “sugar” beans (borlotti or cranberry); tinned fish; salted dried fish or shrimp; bitter herbs; dhal; and mixed vegetables.

And the world-famous bunny chow? Well, that’s a point of contention:

There are a few restaurants that could be credited with its invention: Manilal Patel, the owner of Patel’s Vegetarian Refreshment Room (which dates back to 1932), claims his father Ranchod was the first person to have made one for sale. The last owners of the original Victory Lounge (which opened in 1945 and closed in June this year), Billy and Kanagee Moodley credit an eatery called Kapitan’s; yet others Queens’s Tavern.

The latter two have long closed, and with them, a part of the bunny chow’s origin story has been lost. One aspect that all writers agree upon, however, is that South Africa’s oppressive racial segregation laws under apartheid strictly prohibited the mixing of races in public spaces and the sale of food to blacks by Indians and others. Patel’s and Victory Lounge defied that, selling to everyone, even if some customers couldn’t sit down to enjoy their meals.

But there’s also the possibility that the bunny chow was created as a convenient way to transport a meal without a container, invented in local homes and simply copied and sold cheaply by takeout shops to labourers, golf caddies and those who couldn’t take a long lunch break.

Who’s hungry?

[source:munchies]