It's our Birthday!
Posted on August 18 2014
It’s Our Birthday!
We wish to share how it all began...
Curry Traders turns 5… On the 15th of August 4 years ago, we attended the Palm Beach Currumbin Farmers Markets, to launch our great idea. Six weeks earlier, on a Sunday afternoon, a friend of mine called in to say hello. He was on his way to the supermarket to buy his family a jar of curry sauce to make a curry for dinner.
I personally had been making Thai and Indian style curries since I left home 30 years ago. What intrigued me, was all the ingredients needed in all of the cookbooks I had. What’s that? And, what is that?
So off I went to the Asian Grocers to source all these fantastic spices and vegetables. This is where my culinary adventure began.
I loved to wake up late on a Saturday morning, walk over to the butcher to buy a kilo of my preferred meat. I would lay out my cookbooks, all of my ingredients, grind the spices in my mortar and pestle and then let my curry simmer for hours. The aroma filling my home made me feel safe, comfortable and content. That’s because I probably had a hangover and would always feel a little bit sorry for myself.
This become a ritual (cooking on a Saturday, not the hangover and feeling sorry for myself) and after awhile this became common knowledge amongst my friends and there was always someone hanging around at mealtime. Back to my friend on that Sunday afternoon. When he told me where he was going, I said “No way, try this instead!”
I handed him my mortar and pestle, raided my pantry for spices and placed measured amounts of each spice into a sandwich bag. Then whilst I was writing him out one of my own recipes (I had by now mastered how to cook a curry, with out a cookbook) he layed the sandwich bag on the bench and was amazed at how fantastic all the spices looked. He couldn’t believe the colours, the aroma, and how healthy it looked.
“What are the spices?” he asked. Well, there were ground spices like turmeric, garam masala, chilli powder and paprika. Whole spices like cardoman, cloves, coriander, cumin and pepper. This was just to name a few as, there was actually 25 individual spices in that bag … which evolved in to Curry Traders Sri Lankan.
He proceeded to say how he had tried to make his own curries, but it was too hard finding the spices, they were expensive and then when he went to make a curry, there was always something missing or some of the recipes are a bit hit and miss. It all seemed a bit too hard, so he just opted for the supermarket pre jarred sauce.
After I placed my recipe into the sandwich bag, I said “That will be $10 bucks thanks.” Joking of coarse, or was I?
I could not sleep that evening thinking that this is a fantastic concept. The perfect recipe and all the fresh spices in one easy to follow kit. How could I go wrong?
Six weeks later and 6 flavours developed, Curry Traders was born. Well not exactly, we first named ourselves Get Curried Away, but after a few months we changed our name to Curry Traders.
With all the support we have had from all of our loyal customers, we now have expanded our product list to 14 flavours in our Gourmet Range, 6 in our Express kits, 2 BBQ rubs and a Tandoori marinade.
And to think it all started on our kitchen bench.
