When all else fails...COOK!!

[maygra]

Years ago, my mother gave me a wok as a birthday present. I used it pretty steadily for a half-dozen years, then I moved and the stove was electric and ..yeah. Under the cabinets it went. We've been doing some cleaning and culling around the house and I pulled it out. It's not particularly deep, and it's aluminum, not iron, but it's still got a

Comments

[maygra]

I'd be hard pressed to tell you because curry isn't a single thing, it's a combination of spices. Saffron has a very mild aromatic smell, if it has any smell at all and in an indian restaurant, unless it was right up under your nose, I doubt you'd notice it at all, but clove, cinnamon, anise, tumeric, ginger, nutmeg, coriander, cardamon -- all of those have far stronger scents. I'm guessing you've run into clove, nutmeg and cinnamon before, elsewhere so it's likely none of those. Tumeric is the spice most often used in place of saffron (because saffron is hella expensive, and most restaurants don't use it any longer unless they specifically say it's saffron say in rice or chicken.)

Other than actually your nose-testing all the spices that can be in a curry, I'm not sure you could narrow it down. The indian restaurant I eat at most often, I don't notice the smell particularly unless I'm at the buffet or have a plate in front of me...but I'll admit the combination of spices can be very strange to our western palates.

Anise and Cardamon both have a vaguely licorice taste and smell -- anise more than cardamon. I think you like chinese food so Ginger isn't likely the problem either, so I'm not sure what to tell you. It's too bad though because not all indian food involves curry and curry isn't my favorite although I'll eat the milder curries (not so much with the hot ones).