Customer Reviews

Indian Vegetarian Cooking: At Your House (Healthy World Cuisine)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My husband and I both love Indian cuisine and have tried many times over the years to cook it, much to our disappointment. We've purchased many Indian cookbooks, but we could never get the recipes to turn out very good. We had almost given up and resigned ourselves to only eating Indian food at restaurants. Then I found this book. It came recommended to me by some Indian friends who said it was easy, authentic & they enjoyed most of the recipes. So far, every recipe we've tried has been great. I am getting results as good or better than restaurant fare for the first time in years! And the recipe presentation is so easy, I'm even trying to make some of the recipes that I used to think would be too hard, like some of the stuffed breads. I have a lot of cookbooks, but I find myself making recipes out of this one all the time. There are also plenty of quick recipes, so even if you've had a long day, you can still have great Indian meal in a half an hour. If you like Indian food, you won't be disappointed with this book.

I have several different Indian cookbooks, and this is the only one I have found practical enough for everyday use. The first time I made an Indian dinner, I visited an Indian grocery store to get the 4 or 5 ingredients (spices) that weren't readily available at my usual grocery store, but these "unusual" ingredients are called for in almost every recipe, so I can use them over and over again--they are called for in almost all the recipes. And unlike my other Indian cookbooks, I don't need to buy a bunch of different spices for each recipe; the basic menu of spices is used over and over again.

I have found every recipe to be delicious and easy to cook. Indian food used to be a treat we had only at restaurants, but now it is something we eat regularly at home.

I can say quite accurately that I have tasted every single dish in this excellent Indian vegetarian cookbook. The genesis of this collaboration between Ms. Humbad and Dr. Boger is described by the publisher's review. What emerged from this collaboration were accurate and well-tested refinements of classic Indian dishes: accurate to the tastes of India, altered over the years of collaboration to lower the fat content - but not too much to change the taste. Substitutions of ingredients were tried to accommodate availability but were rejected in cases when this compromised the result. The make-ability of these dishes was tediously worked out, simplifying a process classically done by a retinue of expert cooks in a wealthy household. Humbad and Boger simplified the process of the recipe creation down to easy to follow directions that can usually be accomplished in minutes by any competent cook who can follow clear directions. The recipes span all kinds of dishes, and the clever cook will find it easy to add just one "Indian dish" to an otherwise ordinary lunch or dinner menu; you don't necessarily have to gear up to make an entire Indian meal. The presentation of the menus themselves is done in a unique fashion, listing both the ingredients by category, so the cook can assemble the dish easily, and then listing step-by-step instructions with all the ingredients repeated now in order of use. The illustrations are evocative and the whole book is the kind of thing you'd be happy to toss into any gift package. How do I know so much about this book? I am Dr. Boger's husband, and, as I said, I have eaten every dish in this book, both in their final, fool-proof form, and in the many preceding versions before they were perfected!

I am a vegetarian cookbook junkie, and the more exotic the better. I hesitated before ordering this one, since I already had so many similar books. But I think I have yuan2 (Chinese for "affinity") with this book. Today I was puzzling over what to do with a bunch of long green beans and four Asian eggplants. Sure enough, there's a recipe called "eggplant and green beans" in this book! I never would have thought of putting these two together myself, certainly not Chinese style, but this dish really worked. I guess lots of disparate ingredients meld harmoniously when stewed with tomatoes in the right spices.

Two of the old reliables from this book I make again and again are mung bean curry, which is especially nice here, since mung beans are available everywhere in Taiwan; and carrot salad, with cilantro and peanuts. I plan to include it in this year's Christmas dinner - it is refreshing, delightful - and *simple*! The various halvas in the dessert section look mouthwatering as well.

The success rate of dishes made from this book is 100% so far, so I will certainly continue to try new ones. We're lucky to have an Indian grocery in Taipei, but the ingredients for most recipes are quite simple and straightforward, once you have a stock of the basic spices. One little thing - you may need to get used to new terms for certain ingredients, e.g. "hing" for asafoetida.

The cover is very pretty and perky, and the page design is clean and comfortable, though I feel the redundant listing of ingredients in the outer margin isn't really necessary.

Another thing that endears me to this book is knowing it is the product of American-Indian cooperation, between two friends. No glamour shots of the authors for the book - they look like colleagues you'd like to have coffee with often! (Or maybe masala tea!)

So, those of you who don't eat meat (or even if you do) and like healthy, easy-to-make exotic food on the light side: get this one. (It's really inexpensive besides! What more could you ask for?)

This is a cookbook I can't get enough of, every recipe I've tried has turned out fantastic. Directions are easy to follow and spices easy to forgo or subsitute with great results. Would recomend to anyone vegetarian or not. Can't stop making the Dal and Sweet Saffron Rice. Mm.

Very practical recipes, very thoughtfully-done book. A user-friendly experience all around. Would not hesitate to give as a gift, even to those who are cooking challenged.

I purchased this based on 6 great reviews. I love to cook and am a long-time vegetarian, but I've not found a good Indian cookbook and have little to no experience cooking Indian foods.

Unfortunately, I just haven't had a good experience with the recipes in this book. Most of them seem to use the same set of spices (hence, very similar tastes no matter what you make). I guess the recipes turned out OK, but not a winner. I thought this would allow me to make restaurant-quality Indian food (as it did for another reviewer), but it didn't. Just more fair-quality food. I liked one recipe with spinach and lentils but couldn't find a recipe for Naan, my chipatis didn't poof up like the recipe said they should, another lentil dish was rejected by my kids. You might be more experienced with Indian food and have better luck, but this cookbook was a disappointment for me.

This is the first Indian cookbook I've used that was so easy to follow. The layout is simple and the results are always phenominal!

This cookbook is easy to understand and the ingrediants are fairly easy to obtain. Great cookbook!

Not sure if it's a complete lack of pictures or even short explanations of the dish, but I find this book completely uninspiring. A good cookbook makes you want to jump up and cook something immediately, but for me this is not one of those books, unfortunately. For a vegetarian cookbook, it also has surprisingly few vegetable-based recipes, mostly with ingredients that might not be fresh at a local supermarket (eggplant, okra, "drumsticks"). At the same time way too much space is allocated to desserts (didn't care for any of them), snacks like "spicy popcorn" (do we really need a cookbook for this?) and chutneys. A somewhat decent section on breads is the only thing that's keeping me from getting rid of this book.