A Taste of India: The Definitive Guide to Regional Cooking, by Madhur Jaffrey

[rachelmanija]

This is one of my all-time favorite books on food; I'm reviewing it because I recently re-read it. It's a survey of India's regional cooking, with recipes and photos. I have not tried the recipes as Indian cooking is really difficult if you don't have a background in it and know what dishes are supposed to taste like because you once ate them at

Comments

[desperance]

I cook from Madhur Jaffrey's recipes all the time (we shared an agent, in the long-ago; I still remember Carol taking a phone-call from Madhur while I was there for lunch, and planning a UK launch for a book that might even have been this one, and saying "No, no, you don't have to cook; we'll get a caterer in...").

[desperance]

...which is to say, I don't understand why you think cooking from her books is hard?

[rachelmanija]

I'm sure it isn't. It's just that I have very specific memories of how things tasted when I ate them in India, and my versions always taste wrong to me. Nostalgia and local ingredients aside, 1) you're a much better cook than me, 2) her dishes are very different from the sort of things I'm good at cooking.

[lorata]

I have a similar problem with Mexican food (my dad's side of the family), because no matter how good something is, or how well I follow a recipe, even if it's his, my instinctive mental response is "this doesn't taste like when Dad makes it..."

you've got me interested in India cooking.

[ancientone]

I might just look this book up. I'm on a Japanese cooking kick right now, and loving every minutes, or should I say, mouthful of it.
Thanks for the idea.