Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: chicken biryani, pea tendrils, tamarind potatoes, Sri Lanka, North America, South Asian (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. With their most recent cookbook, Home Baking, the authors of Seductions of Rice and Hot Sour Salty Sweet strayed slightly from the kind of pungent Asian food that is their strength, but they're back on track with this paean to the subcontinent, which they've been visiting separately and together since the 1970s. The many dals, like soupy Easy Karnataka Chana with chickpeas and salads like Nepali Green Bean-Sesame Salad are simple and terrific. Entrees are often spicy and always authentic, like Goan Pork Vindaloo, made by rubbing a vinegar-spice paste into the meat. A chapter on street foods is full of promising tidbits, including the suggestion that readers make fried foods such as Mushroom Pakoras with Fresh Herb Chutney for guests (so long as they don't mind spending a whole lot of time in the kitchen). Reading Alford and Duguid's chatty text and headnotes is like receiving envy-inducing postcards from a college friend who never gave up backpacking—if you have the sort of friends who would be disposed to build a tandoor oven out of clay and manure or visit Arugam Bay in Sri Lanka based on a tip from a snake-bitten fellow traveler. This is a comprehensive book filled with compelling writing—a worthy addition to the couple's impressive body of work. Color and b&w photos. (On sale Nov. 20)
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Product Description

For this companion volume to the award-winning Hot Sour Salty Sweet, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid travel west from Southeast Asia to that vast landmass the colonial British called the Indian Subcontinent. It includes not just India, but extends north to Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal and as far south as Sri Lanka, the island nation so devastated by the recent tsunami. For people who love food and cooking, this vast region is a source of infinite variety and eye-opening flavors.

Home cooks discover the Tibetan-influenced food of Nepal, the Southeast Asian tastes of Sri Lanka, the central Asian grilled meats and clay-oven breads of the northwest frontier, the vegetarian cooking of the Hindus of southern India and of the Jain people of Gujarat. It was just twenty years ago that cooks began to understand the relationships between the multifaceted cuisines of the Mediterranean; now we can begin to do the same with the foods of the Subcontinent.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Artisan; illustrated edition edition (November 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579652522
• ISBN-13: 978-1579652524
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 10 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #64,637 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

98 of 108 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful Mix of Travelogue and Recipies, December 4, 2005

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

One of the joys, perhaps even a requirement of a good cookbook is for it to give you more than an endless list of recipies. It should teach you something about the country or region of the origin of the recipies. It might give you some ideas about the culture, the history, the whys and wherefores of the spices, perhaps the religious aspects.

And in this ares these authors excell. As the sub-title says, this book is about their travels throughout the Indian sub-continent. It shows something of the people, the way they live, the equipment they use to prepare the foods being cooked.

Then there are the recipies:

There are nine recipies for rice alone, one of the staples of my diet. I had shrimp with rice last night. But now I find myself looking at the beautiful color photograph of the Chile Shrimp Stir-Fry on page 216. It also has curry, cinnamon, lime juice, and more.

Any reason you can think of for not having shrimp two days in a row?

Well, one reason might be the pork curry in aromatic broth from page 279.

And to go with either one of these, cucumber salad with hot spiced mustard dressing from pages 61 & 62.

Banana-Pepper Rounds which seem to have a crisp caramelized skin over the cooked banana. Maybe serve this over ice cream for a combination of flavor and temperature.

Well, I'm stopping this writing and starting on a list to take to the supermarket. Thankfully they've made suggestions on alternates for some of the spices that I am unlikely to find in the small Nevada town in which I live.

Very well done guys!

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and authentic, September 29, 2006

By	Bengali cook (Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews

I cannot imagine anyone writing anything negative about this book...my family and I come from Bangladesh and India and I have tons of Pakistani friends. The depth that the authors have gone into understanding ingredients and the cooking is remarkable. I cannot imagine how they came to know some of those details. Like my neighbor in PA who had written a negative review, I have also Jaffrey's books which i love but Alford and Duguid got into the very essence of real home cooking of the subcontinent. Other authors sometimes focus on party foods while this book advises the readers on what people really eat on a daily basis. The other travel advice is interesting and the photographs gorgeous although i understand the concerns of the Bethlehem, PA reviewer of pictures that are hard to interpret. Just let it go. They still do an even better job with this book than Hot Sour Salty Sweet. The book is great. I'm glad amazon offers it for a lower price than bookstores.

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars a few nitpicks, January 6, 2007

By	cakeandcoffee (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

I agree that this is a great 'coffee table' type book and that the authors have done some immaculate research into some of the lesser well known cuisines of the subcontinent and have lovely pictures to document their travels. What I didn't care for are the 'Westernizing' of the names of the dishes. For example, Gulab Jamun (which is a pretty well-known dessert to most Indian food fans)becomes something like Cottage cheese soaked in syrup. As an Indian, I also found a lot of the dishes very underspiced. I know that with Indian food, it really is a matter of taste, but I often found myself adding up to 3times the amount of spices called for in a recipe. Because it's so bulky, I often find myself turning to my other Indian cookbooks which are easier to keep near me as I cook in the kitchen.