Food
and cooking articles and information:
Book
Review of 'Indian Home Cooking' by Suvir Saran
and Stephanie Lyness
To
order a copy of Indian
Home Cooking
<click
here>
Review written by Hub-UK
 A
truly beautiful book . . . in all respects. It is beautifully
put together with some of the best food photography
I have seen. This compliments an excellent style of
writing which is both easy to understand and very informative.
Writing
book reviews is to my mind always difficult, especially
when you have been asked to do so by an author. Your
initial reaction is one of trepidation. What if it is
rubbish? How do I avoid causing offense? It is not like
a Bank reference which is always good and just has different
degrees of goodness! You can not do that when writing
about a book as it soon becomes apparent that you are
just writing to appease the author. I had no need to
worry when Indian Home Cooking arrived on my doorstep,
all the way from the States.
My
first reaction when I opened the package was "Wow,
what a beautiful book". As you do I flicked through
the pages to get a feel for what the book was like.
I was sold from the word go. As I said at the start,
the photography is stunning (on the basis that you like
food) and the whole book smacks of quality. Each page
is of a high quality glossy paper with each recipe clearly
laid out one to a page.
There
are thirteen sections in the book:
- soups
- dals
- vegetables
- rice
- poultry
- meats
- fish
and shellfish
- appetizers
and snacks
- raitas
- flatbreads
and crackers
- pickles
and chutneys
- sweets
- drinks
Each
section has its own introduction which is followed by
the recipes and there is no confusion as to what the
recipe is as they are all given their English title
with the Indian title printed below. At the top of each
recipe you will find a brief description and information
about the dish followed by the ingredients. The list
of ingredients have been printed in bold which makes
it very easy to refer to the recipe when preparing.
The cooking instructions are clear and easy to follow.
At
the back of the book there is a short glossary which
tells you about some of the ingredients you might not
be familiar with. For example:
ASAFETIDA
(HEENG): A sand-colored powder made from
the root of a fennel-like plant. When cooked, asefetida
has a pungent flavor and smell reminiscent of the
flavor of onion and garlic. It is used in the . .
. . .
This
is a very different book to the Indian cookery books
I have come across in the past - they scared me off
trying to cook Indian dishes as I did not really understand
them nor know most of the ingredients. This book seeks
to and achieves the breaking down of the barriers by
allowing every day home cooks like you and me, to create
for ourselves, enjoyable Indian cuisine in our own home.
This is best summed up by taking a few key phrases from
Suvir's Introduction:
I
do not pretend to have compiled a collection of "classic"
Indian recipes
Even
in India, Indian food has changed dramatically in
the last fifty years
This
is my generation of Indian cuisine
I
got my first and most important training in the kitchen
of my New Delhi home from a man named Panditji -
to find out more <click here>
.
. . the best way to teach people to cook Indian food
is to demystify it for them
I've
organized this book in the same way hat I teach my
classes, by starting with straightforward recipes
that you can learn to embroider
.
. . so whenever possible I've called for common supermarket
ingredients, easy to find and familiar to use
 SUVIR
SARAN has received accolades from the New York Times
and The New Yorker for his regional Indian cooking.
His new restaurant, Devi, opened in September 2004.
He is a contributing editor to Food Arts magazine and
teaches Indian cooking classes that have been featured
in the New York Times. He lives in New York.
STEPHANIE
LYNESS is a regional food critic for the New York
Times who has collaborated on several cookbooks, including
Second Helpings from Union Square Café. She lives
in Connecticut.
To
summarise:
You
want to put this book at the top of your wanted list.
First class book well written and beautifully illustrated.
When is the follow up going to be published?
Example
recipe:
Managlore
Fried Shrimp
Jhinga Mangaloree
To
order a copy of Indian Home Cooking <click
here>
About
Suvir Saran
If
you would like to know more about Suvir Saran have a
look at his biography page <click
here>
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