Nagoya Cochin Curry

Thank you Nagoya!

Spice:  6 out of 10 
Rating: 9.5 out of 10


Today's curry is served with a side of history. As you can see by the rating I loved this curry, but first let's get to our brief history lesson. One great thing about food is that you can learn a lot about the culture and history of the society where it originated when you eat. This is why you can goto a Japanese, Italian, Greek, Mexican, Thai, etc restaurant and you'll find vastly different food.  There is a lot of culture behind Japanese food and it all ties in with the rest of Japanese society - however, the only things I'm ever going to get into on this blog are about Japanese culture and/or history as it relates to Japanese Curry. 


This curry is thanks to the delicious Nagoya Cochin Chicken. I had never heard of this breed of chicken before - actually I can't name any other breed of chicken. I'm not an expert on chicken breeds, I just eat them! It's only because my wife told me that this curry was made from a special kind of chicken that I ever found out about it.  


This is where not being able to really read Japanese and choosing a curry based purely on the box gets interesting.  Anyway, I was intrigued about this 'special chicken' after I'd eaten the curry and decided it was time to visit my good friend Google. This is how I learned that Nagoya is known for their heirloom breed of chicken known as the Nagoya Cochin. 

I taste wonderful!

The Nagoya Cochin chicken is apparently a famous breed of chicken according to the internet.  In fact, Nagoya is known for it's dishes made from this breed of chicken.  There are entire restaurants in Nagoya devoted solely to different dishes cooked from the Nagoya Cochin. Normally you can't eat raw poultry, but you can apparently eat Nagoya Cochin sashimi!  This breed originally came into existence during the Meiji era by crossing a local Nagoya breed with a Chinese breed of chickens called the Cochin Buff. These chickens became popular because they laid a large number of eggs and their meat was especially tasty (I can attest to this). 

When other breeds that grew much faster were brought to Japan after World War II there was a potential crisis that could have wiped out the breed. Instead, these prized chickens were saved (THANK YOU) by the Poultry Institute of the Aichi Agricultural Research Center which raised awareness of the high quality flavor and low fat content of the meat compared to the more mass-produced breeds which I assume came from the United States. 

This breed is also different from mass-bred chickens in that they take about 2.5 times longer to mature than other chicken breeds.  In line with Kobe beef these chickens are allowed to roam freely and are not kept in cages. I personally think this has a lot to do with how good they taste - I believe ANY breed of any animal will taste better if they are allowed to live as they were meant to rather than be force-fed in a tiny cage until they are slaughtered.  In addition they weigh less than other chickens and so the meat costs about 4 times more than other chicken meat.  I will happily pay 4 times as much for some of this chicken when I'm in Japan! Not on a day-to-day basis, but every now and then I'd say splurge on the Nagoya Cochin!! ^_^  

I need to goto Nagoya next time I visit Japan so that I can try this meat fresh, because in a prepared package of curry which has a bunch of preservatives in it it was still AMAZING.  Enough learning, let's get to the curry!

♡o｡.(✿ฺ｡ ✿ฺ)

When I first opened the package of curry I was greeted by the most the most wonderful smell. If heaven exists it might smell a little bit like this. It's the best smelling curry I've ever had that was not cooked fresh at home or in a restaurant. In fact, it smelled better than a lot of curry I've had in restaurants. 


The curry itself tasted great.  It was creamy, had a nice medium level of spice, and had a hint of a rustic - almost smokey flavor to it. Not the kind of smokey that over powers the food and makes you feel like you're eating next to a campfire. It was subtle, and it was that extra bit of flavor that drove this over the edge into the realm of not just great curry, but GREAT CURRY. 


The balance between spice and smokey rustic flavors was perfect. It was balanced better than most peoples' check books!  Then there was the creamy aspect.  I've never had curry that I would describe as 'creamy' before.  I want more, there has to be others.  It tasted like a tomato based cream. Not quite to the extreme as an alfredo sauce, but to the level that a Japanese dish would borrow the "creaminess" from an Italian dish and make something wholly Japanese. The ability to take something from one culture and then change into something more in line with Japanese culture and pass it off as their own is one thing that I love about Japan, but that's a whole other topic.  Another thing I love about Japan is that you can buy Nagoya Cochin Curry in a supermarket! 


This curry is just about perfect for a store bought curry. There is nothing wrong with it except that it wasn't in a package 10 times larger.  If you're in Japan stop reading this blog and go get yourself some of this curry!

I was very sad to see this
｡゜(｀Д´)゜｡