Customer Reviews

Indian (What's Cooking)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I own several cookbooks in the "What's Cooking" series and I love them. The Indian cookbook was the first in the series that I purchased and it is still the one that I used the most. We eat a lot of Indian and Pakistani food in my house and I love to try new recipes. But sometimes I don't have the time or energy to do lots of fancy involved steps. Most of the recipes in the "What's Cooking Indian" cookbook are simple and easy with ingredients that you can probably find in your local supermarket. The "What's Cooking" cookbooks are a well-done series of books. They are oversized with simple and clear step-by-step instructions and they also frequently include pictures for some of the preparation steps as well as the finished product. Each recipe has a beautiful full-page color picture of the finished dish on the page facing the recipe. One thing that I wish they had done in the book was to include the Indian names for the recipes. Most of the names have been translated into English. So, if you eat out in Indian restaurants frequently and are familiar with the Indian names of the dishes you won't be able to simply flip to the index and look up something like "Aloo Chat". Instead they call the `chat' dish something like "Potato and chickpea snack" (which by the way is delicious!). The book is divided into several sections such as appetizers, vegetables, meat & poultry, seafood, pulses, rice & breads, snacks & desserts. Overall there are over 100 recipes. My husband & I have several favorite recipes from the book including the rice pudding, the `aloo chat', several of the rice dishes, and the lamb chops. This is a great cookbook and one that I use frequently. I recommend this book to anyone who loves Indian cooking and would like to try to make some at home. This is a great book for beginners!

This book has been very enjoyable. This book has a wide variety of recipes, and they are made with ingredients that are easy to find. I was amazed at how many recipes can be made with ingredients that we have on hand. This book is well organized, and best of all it offers a picture of every single recipe. So you know what it is going to look like. The recipes that I have tried have been very good, and enjoyable. This book gets very high ratings since the recipes are written clearly, even for the begining cook. My only minor complaint with this book is that all recipes are not given in their actual name but generic names. Still if you are looking for a book for the beginner, or if you are just starting to get interested in Indian cooking, this is a great book to start with.

My husband is Indian, so I cook Indian quite often. This cookbook has realistic, good, step-by-step recipes that can be done with a basic Indian set of ingredients. The food actually turns out how it is supposed to, and tastes great! If you only have 1 Indian Cookbook, this is the one I would recommend.

As a picture book this cookbook is great, but I have to question the portions of the ingredients, particularly the oil used. Many recipes start off calling for 1 1/4 CUPS of oil. If you take this verbatim, you end with oil soup, nothing like the photos.
Interestingly, if you view the preparation photos sometimes the pan looks almost dry (c.f. Chicken and Onions). Where's the 1 1/4 cups of oil? That certainly wasn't absorbed by 4 onions.
Similarly the amount of water also seems out of proportion. What do 1 1/4 cups oil mixed with 2 1/2 cups water look like with 2 lbs. of lamb cooked in a pot with the lid on? Not what's on page 23.
Something is wrong here, but it does look great on the coffee table.
And as far as ingredients go, yes 95% of them are in the grocery store shelves but items like dried mango powder or black cumin seed or masoor dhal are probably not. You may have to do a little on-line shopping but then I would expect to.
I thought the following excerpt from the recipe for Chapati was amusing: After kneading the flour, salt and water for 7-10 minutes it says to let the dough "rise" for 15-20 minutes. Anyone see anything wrong with those instructions? There's no leavening. It won't "rise" in 15-20 years. It does taste good though.
Oh, and I would suggest a good oil separator.

This book is GREAT! I love Indian food and this book has several recipes that taste exactly the same as the best dishes I have had in restaurants. The pictures with each recipe are great because they act as a guide when you are cooking. Directions are generally simple which adds to the pleasure of using this book.

I have owned this book for over 5 years. Every recipe I have tried from this book turns out great. I agree with another reviewer on the oil part. I just ignore the amount of fat recommended in the recipe, I just use a small amount (2-3 tblspns). Recipes are very easy to follow. Some of my favorite recipes from the book - Almond slices, Spiced cream of wheat, Sliced Beef with yogurt and spices, Bengali Style fish, Fired fish in Gram flour. I highly recommend this book for beginner or experienced cook alike.

A wonderful cookbook! As for the only negative review I see above, honestly, almost all Indian/Pakistani dishes ask for 1 1/2 c of oil. You can cut this in half if you'd like.

The recipes are supper easy to follow and I always get great compliments on the dishes.

My favorite cookbook by far!

This book was very cool! The pictures show recipes step by step, which is very helpful, especially if this is your ist time cooking this cusine. It was easy to find the ingredients needes for most of the recipes. A+++

this is a very helpful book. the step by step pictures are something i could not find in any other indian cookbook. the directions are very simple to follow, and even the toughest recipes seem easy.

I wasn't terribly impressed when I first flipped through this book. A few dishes appeared distinctly unappetizing (the Chicken Tandoori, for instance) and the bulk of the recipes seemed quite a bit removed from those in other Indian cookbooks ... more like fast food restaurant productions rather than the sort of thing you might actually find in India.

In consideration, however, I think my initial assessment was unfair. On looking through this book I note that, though a few recipes have 'curry' in the title, curry powder appears nowhere as an ingredient and in each dish and the spices for each are mixed individually. In using these blends, the author has managed to create dishes that are bright and lively in color, and a pleasant change from the often drab and sometimes downright awful dark browns that typical spice usages impart to may Indian dishes. Moreover, the dishes that are presented appear to have been cooked to preserve freshness. Indian cookery rarely features rare meat or 'al dente' vegetables and westerners may find a lot of dishes to have an 'over-cooked' quality to them. All in all, he recipes in this collection address these features of an otherwise delightful cuisine and the book thus represent something refreshing and interesting.