India: Cookbook

This is just an amazing book, full of love for the recipes contained within it, and Pushpesh Pant must have spent a huge amount of time and effort in putting it together. The publisher has also gone to great effort to make the book characterful. In a 30 page introduction, each region of India is explored, telling the reader a bit about its character, history, and distinctive cuisine. The main part of the book is the recipes, which are well-organised. The main sections are arranged as appetisers, main dishes, pulses, breads, and so on. Within each section, a lot of effort has been taken to group dishes by type, or by main ingredient, depending on what makes most sense. For example, all of the pakora recipes are grouped together into 10 pages. All of the main dishes where okra is the main ingredient are gathered together. This makes it really easy to browse, looking at a dry potato dish from Punjab, or a slightly different Delhi dish of potato and yoghurt, or a potato dish from Kerala involving coconut... you get the idea. To give you an idea of the depth of the book, there are 54 recipes for pickles, chutneys and raita, which vary from requiring a few ingredients, to over 10, and from 10 minutes preparation, to hours. There's something in here for everyone. Want to make a quick half-hour lunch of potato curry with some plain parathas? It's in here. Want to make a pan-Indian thali of ancient and modern dishes? You can do that. Or maybe you'd like to plan an intimate meal centred on a particular region of India, to make it as authentic as possible? I think that the main advantage of the book is that it gives you so many ideas, you aren't going to make the boring chicken curry you always make, you might decide instead to go to the supermarket and buy some taro roots and jackfruits! The paper quality is obviously a conscious design decision to make it have a slightly rough feel, and it is not an indication of poor publishing. Each section is also printed on a different coloured paper, which is a nice touch. People have also commented that the photos should appear by the recipes. I disagree - the idea of having a photo of a bench containing 5 or 6 different plates of food is so you can see them with reference to other dishes. All pictures are labelled with the page numbers where you can find the recipes, and the recipes are labelled with a camera icon and a page number so you can find the photos. It's fine. Finally, those reviews indicating the amount of errors, quite simply I don't believe in them. The errors are there, of course - but they are so infrequent and so obvious that it in no way detracts from the quality of the work as a whole. There are 1,000 recipes - the hit rate with flawless instructions is actually very high. Sure, if you want to go out and buy 10 cartons of yoghurt for the morsel of chicken you are cooking, be my guest. I'm exaggerating a bit - but there's some common sense needed here. Like the recipe that forgets to tell you to combine one main part of the dish with another main part of the dish. Please, this is not NASA, we are not making a moon buggy. We are making a pakora, just spend some time studying the WHOLE recipe before starting it! It's a pleasure to just flick through the book - I've been spending all weekend just browsing the recipes (and cooking some, too), it's been great!

I have been waiting for this book with anticipation. I have not come across any mistakes or incomplete recipes yet - as mentioned by some of the other reviewers - but there are a whole lot of recipes to go through. This is by far the most complete Indian cookery book I have ever seen. This book + Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Bible are probably the only Indian cookery books you will ever need. It is true that this book seems to be written for experienced cooks. The recipes are very brief so you do need to be confident in technique - confident enough to improvise a little to make the dishes to your own taste. The photos in the book are beautiful, but it could have done with some more. I read the comments from other reviewers about the quality of the paper. The quality is fine. The paper is a coloured uncoated stock and is probably chosen as a design feature more than anything else. one warning - and a downside - read carefully for how many portions the recipes are, as this is not consistent throughout the book. i ended up cooking a huge pan of curry for 6 people!

This would be my 10th cookbook regarding the Indian cuisine, I would say am well familiar with the techniques and recipes by now - and I have to say this one's definitely worth the hype. A great variety of dishes, including something I've not seen in other Indian cookbooks - Tribal foods from the North East! Naga pork stew with bamboo shoots, and a couple other unusual things you wouldn't see elsewhere. Also, mr Pant has done a better job at dividing the Indian cuisines into categories. Whereas usual cookbooks just lazily state north-west-south-east, this book divides them into nine and gives background on each. Absolutely worthwhile! Extra love to the masala section. While I would have liked to see included some more regional masala recipes (like for example the Marathi goda masala, or a couple types of Kolhapuri masalas), its a great book for those wanting to familiarize themselves with Indian food and cuisines, and for those already familiar I'd recommend it for its inclusion of adivasi and tribal recipes, and awadhi cuisine which is also more scarcely seen on regular cookbooks pages.

After 20 years of cooking Asian, especially southern Asian food, I have a pretty extensive collection of recipe books of all types and like to think I am pretty experienced in the cuisine. One of my biggest issues is finding new recipes rather than repeats of those often found in Indian restaurant menus. This one is quite different though! Yes, there are a few recipes that you can find in just about every book published, however the majority look very authentic to me. Certainly they remind me of the sorts of dishes I have eaten around India and Sri Lanka. I haven't had a chance to create a lot of dishes, but those I have done have been pretty easy to do and the aromatic results have had a thumbs up by all diners. Many recipes require few additional ingredients that most curry enthusiasts won't already have - and with the advent of on-line specialist grocery stores many can be easily purchased or just omitted. Out of the UK supermarkets Tescos is a good resource for reasonably priced spices and exotic vegetables. Any minuses? Well, maybe there are some errors in the instructions on sterilising equipment and few are likely to create the pastes and masalas in the quantities suggested. Some of the recipes also ask for huge amounts of oils and fats: reducing them might take away some of the overall intended result, but would be far healthier. For the sheer number of recipes for the price, it I think it is a good investment.

Molto contento del libro e delle ricette. Finora il miglior ricettario di cucina Indiana che abbia mai comprato.

It great book for Indian cuisine

Um livro completo, cobrindo as mais diferentes receitas da India. Encontrei nele receitas fáceis de fazer. Deliciosas.

This cookbook has a great number of full-colour photographs, but the bulk of the tome is comprised of pages which appear nearly like newsprint on single-coloured paper. It feels like a sort of food-based telephone directory, and I, for one, find its utter lack of pretentiousness completely charming. Haven't we all seen enough overproduced high-gloss vanity projects chock full of beautifully staged food which nonetheless seems absolutely unappetizing? Use your imagination to great effect here and learn the ingredients by working with them in a hands-on manner. Experience will prove a far better teacher than following a book which reads like a wiring diagram. Some of the descriptions are a bit vague, true, but to pad a 815-page doorstop like this would be a bit unnecessary. The recipes are fascinating, and history about the food traditions of various regions is at the beginning of the book so as to not weigh down the recipes themselves with idle nattering about someone's 17-stop train journey or their pilgrimage to get a single leaf from a tree on a mountaintop or such nonsense. You're here to learn about food, right? Then roll up your sleeves and hop to it!

This is not my first Phaidon Press book, and that was for a reason. They are like an encyclopaedia of ethnic food, written by a subject-matter expert. But as well as their 'data' content, they are masterpieces of graphic design and typesetting, as befits a printing house that started as a publisher of Art books - beautifully put together, with quirky little touches - Mexico comes with a paper lace outer cover, India comes in a shopping bag of the sort you would see in any Indian market. Page references are like the little paper price sticker you see in every ethnic market. Well organised, beautifully photographed, they are as much a pleasure to read as they are to use for reference. My wife is not a cook and she couldn't wait to browse through it and find me recipes to make, excitedly exclaiming over some as-yet untried regional speciality. From a cooks logistical perspective, every recipe details the number of item or servings, the region the dish comes from, the reference page for photos, etc. in a clear easy-to-read font, with two ribbon bookmarks - one for dinner, one for starter or dessert. Despite its size the paper used is relatively lightweight, without feeling it is going to be delicate or see-through, so the book stays open at the page. Well made, stitched and glued, it will last for years. Now I need to save up to buy China and The Silver Spoon to go with my other Phaidon books. And maybe Greece, Turkey and Mezze... I need a second job.