Layering a Curry

As layered as Nara's shrubbery

Oia and Thira may be towns born on the same rock in Santorini, but there the similarity ends. While the first is about magnificent sunsets on the horizon and extraordinary signature-style architecture,  the second sings in what the buildings hold within - sensuous scenic paintings and absolutely divine jewellery. You can't have gone to just one before claiming that you've seen the Greek island in its truest form and substance. You must first experience the aesthetic adventure both promise.

This holds true too to how you'll cook cherry tomatoes in a pot of curry. It doesn't matter if swimming in its spicy, coconut-rich gravy is slices of pork, fish or chicken. What's crucial is the way the heat, as in temperature and spice, in the thick creamy sauce interacts with these divinely sweet fruit. And how that heat interacts with them depends on whether you've tossed in these cut or uncut.

If they go in whole and get cooked till the point where their skins "crack", popping them straight into your mouth brings a burst of steaming tomato juice over every taste bud embedded in your tongue. But if you splice the tomatoes in half before cooking them with the meat in the curry pot, the spicy juices permeate the cut surfaces and nicely inter-mingle with the tomatoes' juices. That mixing creates a totally new sensation surpassing every experience that you've ever made with a meal of curry.

As Santorini has layers of differences hidden within the folds rising from its shore, so too will a curry when half the tomatoes are tossed in whole, and half halved before doing so. Then this humble Asian dish takes on an added complexity in taste and texture, adding into the dish a fourth and fifth dimension.