Chicken Tikka Masala

Italy has pasta, that foolproof staple of my kitchen that goes with everything. Italy also has pesto, which I only discovered, to my shame, at uni, and which has not been absent from my cupboard since.

Japan has ramen, udon, sushi, miso, gyoza... oh crap, I'll need to clean the drool from my keyboard now.

Portugal invented this little thing called piri-piri. Nando's took the magical piri-piri and made chicken taste unbelievable. Domino's took the sacred piri-piri and made a mind-blowing new pizza.

Yet all these I would happily deny for a year. You see, I'm immensely proud of my Indian roots, especially where food is concerned. (It's not like I can be proud of my British culinary heritage, is it? Almost everything the Brits are famous for cooking is either grossly unhealthy or unhealthily gross.) Give me curry, my friends. A nice lamb bhuna or a chicken pathia ought to do it. Don't forget the pilau rice and the keema naan either.

Now, before you back away in horror crying "But your mouth! Your stomach! Your arse!" please remember that I've been raised on curry. Dad had me eating spicy lentils and rice from the day I could eat solid food. In fact, I'm fairly sure my blood type is Balti Positive. So don't you worry that it'll be too spicy for my tongue, or too rich for my stomach.

As for troubles of a more southernly nature, those only really apply to skinny white boys who'll eat the hottest madras in Rusholme just to prove how 'ard they are. If they're too dumb to realise that true Indian curries are nowhere near that hot, and that that level of spice is purely a British invention (as I said: grossly unhealthy), then they deserve to get the runs in the morning.

Give me a curry a day for a year, and I'll be more than satisfied. It's the closest I'll be getting to India for a while.