The Cuisines of India: The Art and Tradition of Regional Indian Cooking

by Smita Chandra

Book Overview

An exotic culinary journey through the rich and flavorful regions of India is filled with a wealth of unusual as well as traditional recipes accompanied by descriptons of locales, legends, history,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060935189
• ISBN13: 9780060935184
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 281 Pages
• Weight: 1.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 8.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Indian cuisine at it's best!

Smita and Sanjeev Chandra teach cooking classes in Toronto. In 2005, I participated in one of their classes and learned several of the recipes from this book. Every one of them was delicious, some of the best Indian food I've ever eaten. They also have an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of spice which they included in the presentation and is in the book. Over the years since that class, I've tried many more recipes, such as "chicken with cashews and coriander" and "spicy baked cauliflower with cottage cheese, bread crumbs and nuts". Absolutely wonderful. It takes patience to assemble all the spices but the result is well worth the effort. I highly recommend this book - a real authoritative text on Indian cuisine.

Excellent Introduction to the World of Indian Cooking!

I'm not the type of person who usually READS a cookbook, but this one has some very interesting stories woven in with the recipes. The author goes through an essential "shopping list" of spices with their descriptions at the beginning, and once I enhanced my spice collection a bit, I was ready to go! The recipes are very approachable; not too tedious or demanding (at least not the ones I've tried so far). This book will certainly have a premium spot in my vast collection of cookbooks, and will get frequent use in my kitchen, as its recipes are getting rave reviews! Highly reccommended!!

must own book

first off, although i think this is a must-own book, i would not recommend it as a first-buy indian cookbook. for someone completely new to indian cooking, one of the classics by sahni or jaffrey would be better as an introduction and basic resource. for instance, if you don't know what paneer is, the authors' unexplained use of the term "cottage cheese" when paneer is called for will be more than confusing. but, as a book to expand your repetoire of indian recipes, this is fabulous! anyone who has more than one or two indian cookbooks has probably noticed the surprising duplication, even between authors, of the same recipes, which is amazing, given the vastness of india and the incredible number of cultures in it. however, this book has more unduplicated recipes than any of my other indian cookbooks (and i have far too many), and i look forward to cooking all of them. but for me, the second, equally important reason to buy this book is the wonderful introductory paragraphs before each recipe. it seems that it is mandatory for indian cookbooks to inlude history as well as cooking instruction,which is no bad thing, given the ignorance of other cultures in this country. i have enjoyed and learned much from the texts of other indian cookbooks. however, the authors of this book write exceptionally well and amusingly, and the subjects not only include indian history, culinary and social, but even anecdotes about apicius, the roman credited with writing the first known european cookbook; a dishonest medieval english baker; elihu yale, for whom the college is named; and many other fascinating known and unknown people. there are quotes from the diaries and writings of european visitors to india from the 17th to the 19th centuries which are fascinating. (sample fascinating fact: poundicherry was a french colony for three centuries, and the cuisine reflects this.) there are stories of indian rajahs and the english raj. if fact, it might be difficult to keep your attention on the recipes while cooking, there is so much else that is interesting in this book. the line drawings are another plus. all in all, this is a superb book--tempting, wide-ranging recipes, entertaining reading and beatiful illustrations.

A very enjoyable cookbook!

Being new to Indian cooking, I immediately appreciated this book for completely describing everything. The author writes with a very personal touch in the written passages before the recipes. What I really like is that she offers suggestions for substitutions, and where to get ingredients that I was not normally familiar with. Many of this dishes have ingredients that have been found in my kitchen for years. The book is broken down into various regions and the recipes have wonderful introductions to give a brief history on the recipe.I would highly recommend this well written book to anyone interested in Indian cooking.