Pushpesh PantIndia: Cookbook: The Cookbook

If you buy this cookbook, you won’t have to buy another Indian cookbook as long as you live! Well written recipes that are easy to follow and thoroughly comprehensive. Amazing book.

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!

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.

The book arrived on time, it is original, not a copy. Colourful pages, beautifull food pictuers and all recepies are mentioned from the area they belong. Easy to prepare, easy explained. It is second time I buy it, for myself now, because the first one I offer it as a gift to a european lady married with an indian man. They were both happy with the gift too!

I spent a week in India at a cooking course where I prepared around 40 dishes. This cookbook was recommended as the best one available. They are right.The only challenge for some will be that the book contains the recipes but not really instructions - it's assumed you know what you're doing. So, for example, if the recipes says to add a liter of water then it's assumed you understand that you then have to simmer until the water has evaporated and you're left with a sauce of the consistency you are expecting. It's similarly the case when adding three onions - it's assumed you know to cook them until caramalised (so a long way past translucent).I've cooked maybe 20 of the dishes ranging from meat based to vegetarian. All have come out perfectly. In most cases the ingredients are common enough at an Indian grocer. Some recipes do call for things that I've never seen though, but these are the minority.My favourite so far is the goan pork vindaloo, which I cook with chicken. It's easy to make and delicious. This is one of the dishes where a surprising amount of water is added and then you reduce until you have a thick sauce.The book warns that many recipes call for the authentic level of oil to be used in cooking, but also mentions that you can reduce the amount once you're used to what's happening.

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!

Livro espetacular. Recomendo a amantes da cozinha indiana ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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

My mom likes all the different recipes in the book. Huge variety.