Customer Reviews

Madhur Jaffrey Indian Cooking

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3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I decided to jump online and write a review for this book (my first time ever taking the time to write a review) after having another wonderful evening due mainly to the wonderful recipes that come out of this book. Most reviews have people touting food credentials such as "the way my mother made it" and "I had these neighbors who were" which may be good, but I feel a bit bias since because often their judgment is skewed to look for what they knew growing up. Not knowing this food growing up, I have depended on restaurants, friends, online recipes, and cookbook authors to introduce me to foods that my palate craves long after the last bite.

That said, this book has some of the best Indian recipes I've ever eaten, in or out of a restaurant or friends house. I'll try to keep this short and simple.

Last night it was the Vindaloo (Goan-style Hot and Sour Pork), pyaz wali basmati chaaval (buttery rice), green lentils with garlic and onion, Gujerati Sem (Gujerati-style green beans) that provoked me to make this entry. I'll have to say that everything in this book that we've tried have been incredible. While the Vindaloo list of steps and ingredients was long, it was by far the best I've ever had. The other three dishes were incredibly easy, with the green beans taking the cake for being the easiest. I actually asked my wife to do these because they appeared so easy and she is easily intimidated in the kitchen with long complicated recipes. I couldn't get enough of them.

The chhole (Sour Chickpeas) are by far the best we've ever had. Incredible!

The instructions are clear, Madhur Jaffrey provides good narrative, and good recommendations for what to serve together (as the example above). I would say if you are looking for an Indian cookbook then this is the one for you, but buyer beware, if you have never ventured down the road of Indian cooking, you may need to make an additional investment of purchasing some spices you may never have owned. But all should be easily purchased in your local grocery store.

Quickly, a couple other books I've tried include (and own):

Madhu Gadia's New Indian Cooking. The recipes in this book are good for a healthy alternative (the Vindaloo I made last night called for 10 tablespoons of oil --- yum!), but you definitely can tell the difference in the final product... as you do with most healthy alternatives. The only recommendation I would make is doubling all of the spices (except maybe the salt, but I don't cook with much salt) if what you are looking for are highly flavored dishes.

From Bengal to Punjab by Smita Chandra, which I would recommend steering clear of. The dishes just never seemed to come out with me wanting to cook them again... which lead me to try cooking probably half the recipes in the book in search for something good and not having to go out and spend money on another book. Three Indian cookbooks later I found Jaffrey's book.

Sanjeev Kapoor's Khazana of Indian Recipes. I had a friend pick this book up for me while he was in India. They tell me that this guy is probably the biggest Indian food celebrity in India. While the dishes from this book were pretty good, it is not friendly to the average American. There a lot of conversions and absolutely no narrative to tell you a little about what you're preparing. Good food but not user friendly.

I hope this info is helpful.

I *love* Indian food. We eat Indian out quite a bit, and I am hooked on palak paneer, aloo gobi, pakoras, samosas, garlic naan, you name it. We were always a bit afraid to start cooking it in our home, though, because there are so many spices and often hours of cooking involved in these dishes. Then we came across Madhur Jaffrey and her series of books.

They are superb!! This one in particular is a staple of our cookbook selection. The first part of the book goes over the spices involved and the different techniques used in cooking, to give you an overview. It even describes the types of equipment you should have. Then ... the recipes!!

All of my favorites are in here. Naan, which we cook on a pizza stone. Saag aloo. Aloo ghosht. You just open the book to any page and you hit a delicious dish. There's beef and chicken, completely vegetarian, even a whole section on relishes and chutneys.

If I had any complaint it would be that there aren't many pictures at all in here, but the recipes come out so well, and the descriptions are so complete that you rarely need to know what it looks like. It's always delicious!

I had tried serving Indian recipes I found on the Internet, and my husband, a Punjabi who relishes his food, would politely eat them. The first time I made Ms. Jaffrey's "everyday" Chicken in Fried Onion Sauce, he turned to me with a big smile on his face and says "it's almost perfect - I would never know this was not prepared by a born-Indian!"

Well - that's all the proof I needed! The only consistent complaint we have about the book is that the pulses (grains and legumes) are quite bland. That may be how the majority of Indians eat them, but in my husband's community, everything is highly seasoned. I've had to adjust all of those recipes for him.

One caution about the previous edition if you decide to buy it used is that occassionally you'll find a step missing in the procedural part of the recipe. You'll get to the end of the recipe and find there is an ingredient left over that's not made it into the pot - like the meat, for instance! I recommend you read all recipes carefully before starting so you can spot ommissions and strategize around them. This approach will also help you plan all the prep steps - measuring and chopping ingredients.

For an introduction to Indian cuisine, Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking can't be beat. The recipes are all easy to follow and to prepare, with ingredients, in both American and metric measurement system, listed in a column next to the recipes. Jaffrey does not concentrate on Indian vegetarian dishes, although many of the recipes ARE vegetarian. There are even a few beef recipes reflecting the non-Hindu population. (The beef baked in yogurt and black pepper is delicious!)

Jaffrey includes a descriptive guide to Indian spices and ingredients as well as a chapter on cooking techniques. The section on breads is fantastic. I never thought I could make poori at home, and yet they turned out perfectly. I make naan fairly frequently, using a breadmaker to knead the dough, because it's my family's favorite. Other excellent dishes include Dry Potatoes with Ginger and Garlic, Gujerati-style Green Beans, and Spicy Baked Chicken. (The recipes are titled in English, with the Indian names in parentheses underneath.)

Anyone with a basic know-how of cooking should be able to succeed with these recipes.

This is absolutely one of my all time favorite cookbooks. Madhur Jaffrey is a teacher par excellence and everything is this book is explained in a clear, concise and easy to understand way. I found it excellent for the beginner and advanced cook alike. Every recipe I have tried has been delicious and the chutneys are beyond compare. The heavenly aromas are reason enough to experiment with the recipes, never mind the delicious tastes! If you love Indian cooking or are thinking about giving it a try, I'd recommend you begin with this book. You absolutely can't go wrong.

`Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking' by the distinguished author of Indian and South Asian cookbooks, Madhur Jaffrey, is an excellent collection of Indian recipes, but it is not quite comparable to the great expositions of national cuisines as we have seen in Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking', Marcella Hazan's `Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking', Diane Kochilas' `The Glorious Food of Greece' or Mimi Sheraton's `The German Cookbook'. These titles are all successful surveys of an entire national cuisine, with in depth treatments of equipment, techniques, pastry, and breads. This volume from the famous Ms. Jaffrey is less than half the length of most of these other volumes. This is not to say that this is an unworthy book, but I believe there are other titles by Ms. Jaffrey which cover major aspects of Indian cooking in much greater depth than does this volume.

I have been aware of Ms. Jaffrey's reputation as a writer and teacher on Indian cooking for many years. Her reputation in her own field is as great or greater than Diana Kennedy's reputation as an apostle of Mexican cooking or Marcella Hazan's reputation among writers on Italian cuisine. Like Ms. Kennedy, she stands out largely because, in English, she has the field pretty much to herself, unlike the very crowded field of writing on Italian and French cooking.

I immediately developed a respect for Ms. Jaffrey before I even read any of her works when I saw her appear on a Food Network episode of the Martha Stewart show, `From Martha's Kitchen' where she pointedly replied to Martha that stockpiling a pantry of staples is simply not a good idea. The proper strategy for filling our pantries is to get only what is called for in recipes we are doing today or this week, and only as much as we need for those recipes. One can begin stocking up on a staple when we are sure that we will make use of the item within the expected shelf life of the staple. I was really pleased to see her repeat that comment in this book, as I have used this observation as a criticism of many books that pad their pages with long lists of pantry items.

As this is only the second book I am reviewing on Indian cuisine, I am especially pleased to see that both books agree on what is probably the keystone of all Indian cooking. It is well known that Indian cuisine has a really unique way with spices with their many different spice mixes, generally addressed by the great unwashed as `curry powders'. What is much less well known is the fact that the great genius of Indian cuisine is to treat their spice ingredients in many different ways, in order to bring out subtle differences in flavor from the same ingredients. Thus, crushing together raw spices will give a different flavor than crushing together roasted spices, which will give a different flavor than cooking whole spices in oil with fried foods. Another subtlety of Indian spice mixes is that while it is well known that chili based spice mixes can help cool the body by the capsicum induced perspiration, the spice mixes from northern India are formulated to have the opposite effect of giving a warming sensation to the body.

An important aspect of this book is that it is inexpensive, meaning that it is a relatively cheap way to get exposure to Indian recipes to see if they are something you wish to explore in greater depth. Even at this bargain price, you have the assurance that you are getting recipes from a recognized expert in Indian cooking.

While the appendix on cooking techniques is much smaller than you may find in one of the major tomes cited above, it is still important to read this before starting the recipes. It is important enough that I would wish the author had placed the section at the beginning of the book. The paragraph on the technique of adding yoghurt (sic) to a braising stew is pretty important, as if you do not follow this technique; there is a high risk that the yoghurt will curdle, spoiling the consistency of the stew.

While Ms. Jaffrey has written big, authoritative books on vegetarian cuisines, this is not one of those books. While very little beef or pork is eaten on the Indian subcontinent due to Hindu and Muslim beliefs, lots of lamb and goat is eaten, and Ms. Jaffrey supplies us with many excellent recipes for both, substituting lamb in recipes where Indians would typically use goat meat.

For those of you who share my interest in bread, I will say that almost all Indian breads are flatbreads, although there is one recipe for yeast leavened bread, `Naan'. Bread and rice are the two major starches in Indian cuisine. Legumes are represented primarily by lentils and peas, both of which have the great virtue of cooking much more quickly than the beans so popular in the Mediterranean.

This book does not deal with spice mixes in depth. For that, you can go to `The Indian Spice Kitchen' by Monisha Bharadwaj which has sections on a half dozen different spice combinations from all over India. This book does have a special chapter on chutneys, which should appeal to anyone who likes the tang of pickles in all its glorious variety.

While there are several very unusual ingredients required by some recipes in this book, the author does an excellent job of limiting these ingredients to just a few dishes. The average American megamart will have almost all the semi-unusual ingredients, but they may be short on things such as edible silver leaf, Kalonji (onion seed), and Kewda essence (from the screwpine plant).

If you are interested in doing serious South Asian cooking, hook up with a good Indian, Pakistani, or Thai grocery or a good Internet supplier.

An excellent `get your feet wet' introduction to Indian cooking.

It would be hard to write (or design) a better cookbook to demystify Indian cooking than this work by Madhur Jaffrey. Between the clarity of the instructions, the exhaustive glossary and the opulent pictures, this is an excellent buy for anyone interested in Indian cookery. Be warned, however; Indian cooking; while neither puzzling nor difficult for the well-equipped kitchen, is time-consuming.

As Ms. Jaffrey explains in her preface, she was exposed in childhood to a number of the different facets of subcontinental cooking which make up "Indian" cuisine. This book reflects these nicely, balancing traditional restaurant favorites (vindaloo, tandoori chicken) against lesser-known aspects of the Indian kitchen. There's also an effective and considerate balance between meat and vegetarian dishes.

No cook should review any recipe book without naming their favorites. Mine are bookmarked by the spills, streaks and blotches acquired from many repetitions, and include the murgh musallam (whole chicken in aluminum foil), parathas (puffy fried breads) and masaledar sem (spicy green beans with tomatoes). But there's so much here- from instructions on how to wash rice to how to mix your own garam masala- that nobody wanting to learn more about Indian cookery will come away from this book disappointed.

Madhur Jaffrey's "Indian Cooking" was the second book on Indo/Pak cooking that came into my cookbook library (by virtue of marriage, my Pakistani husband already owned it). The first recipe I made was Ground Lamb and Peas (Kheema Matar), made for our wedding dinner. It was made with my mother in mind. Since she didn't like lamb because it "tasted fuzzy" I thought I'd surprise her with a good lamb dish. We didn't tell her what is was until after the dinner, and she loved it. (bought her this book later as a gift)

One dish that is always requested by family and friends is the Hard-boiled Eggs in a Spicy Cream Sauce (Malaidar unday) which is my husband's "signature" dish.

Among our favorites the Lamb with Spinach (Dilli ka saag gosht) which we make with beef (yes it's spinach but all the children we've prepared it for actually like it!) Do Paiza (or 2 onions) we also make with beef (I have a hard time with lamb now after the birth of my last child), and Aloo Gosht (a stew).

When our paperback copy of the book fell apart do to it's constant use and accidental spills (it looked at though it had been through a war) we bought the new expanded addition. Much to my delight my favorite dish Shahi Korma was now included.

This is traditonal Indo/Pak everyday and special meals cooking -- I think the biggest testament to the book is that when I made recipes from it for my hard to please mother-in-law she actually liked them!

Madhur Jaffrey's "Indian Cooking" is the first Indian cookbook that I ever purchased. My husband is Pakistani and does all of his cooking without the aid of recipes or cookbooks. I wanted to try my hand at some Indian/Pakistani cooking so I picked up this book. And over the years I have used it very frequently and it has become rather worn and splattered.

The first several sections of the book contain explanations of the spices and techniques involved in Indian cooking, such as how to make ghee (clarified butter). It also includes descriptions of the spices and how to prepare them for the recipes. There is a list of recommended equipment such as a blender or food processor to make garlic and ginger paste.

The book contains several pages of colored pictures of the finished recipes. The recipes include a good selection of meat, chicken, seafood, vegetable, pulse (beans), bread, rice and dessert recipes. Some of my husband and my favorite recipes from the cookbook are: Kheema Matter (ground meat with peas), Kasmiri Kofte (spiced 'meatballs'), Rogan Josh (lamb stew), Aloo Gosht (Lamb & Potato), Masalader Murgh (Spicy Baked Chicken), Masoor Dal (red split lentils) and Masalder Basmati (spiced basmati rice). The recipes are clear and easy to follow and the book as a whole is well organized. For many of the recipes, Jaffrey has listed other dishes that would go well with it. My husband and I love the food that I have prepared by following the recipes in this cookbook.

I loved this cookbook so much that I bought several more by Jaffrey!

I love to cook and particularly love cooking the cuisine of India. Before I bought this book, I though Julie Sahni's books were the best...and I still like them very much. But this book is absolutely the best if you want easy, tasty Indian food. It's true that the measurements are a bit odd - it's written for Europeans, not us Americans, but the recipes are forgiving. You can add and take away and still succeed. Her Lamb with Spinach recipe is the very best! To sum it up, this is a must-have cookbook if you enjoy the food of India.