Whether on special occasions or on the regular, most Indian homes make chicken curry. But very few people know contribution this humble staple of the Indian home kitchen has made to Italian cuisine. The story begins in 1961.

As is well known, Michelangelo Antonioni's greatest box-office success was in India. In 1960 L'Avventura had a golden jubilee run across North India. On a press tour, the star Monica Vitti fell in love with India.

She used her connections to be named Italian cultural attaché to India. She was to spend two years in Delhi, returning to Italy only to film her scenes for La Notte and L'Eclisse. An avid cook, Vitti loved North Indian food and learned to make her favourite dishes.

Tiring of the rich food served at embassy parties she particularly enjoyed eating in the homes of Indian friends such as Khushwant Singh. At one dinner Singh's cook prepared a simple chicken curry and Vitti asked how it was made.

The cook was summoned and Vitti asked in Italian if the chicken was added "raw" or marinated first. The Indian translator asked the cook only if the chicken was raw. The cook laughed and said, "Yeh kachcha thorai hai!" Or "This is hardly raw!"

Vitti who had been learning Hindi in her spare time thought he said, "Yeh kachchathorai hai!" Or "This is kachchathorai"--and assumed he had told her the name of the dish. She asked Singh to write down the recipe and took it back to Italy in 1963 when her time was done.

She prepared it often for friends, substituting local ingredients for the Indian spices and herbs she could not find in Rome. In her first cookbook she titled it "Cacciatore". The rest is history.