Customer Reviews

Pure and Simple: Homemade Indian Vegetarian Cuisine

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My husband gave me four different Indian cookbooks (The Spice Box: A Vegetarian Indian Cookbook (Vegetarian Cooking), From Mom With Love . . .: A Complete Guide to Indian Cooking and Entertaining, The Everything Indian Cookbook: 300 Tantalizing Recipes--From Sizzling Tandoori Chicken to Fiery Lamb Vindaloo (Everything: Cooking)) for Christmas this past year and have been making Indian food regularly since then. This cookbook is beautifully laid out with step by step pictures for each recipe. A lot of the dishes are new to me, seeing a picture of the end product is extremely helpful. The beginning of the book offers plenty of information for novice Indian cooks. I particularly liked the Goodness of Legumes section because I wasn't familiar with all the different lentils and their names. It was easy ordering them when I had both the common English name as well as the Indian name. My only complaint of the book is that the dal dishes (plus potatoes, green bananas,etc) are cooked in a pressure cooker which I don't have. So, I have to cook by trial and error on the stove top until I get one.
Here are some of the recipes I've made and how I feel about the end product:
Cabbage and Peas: I needed to use up some left over cabbage and tried this dish. It wasn't full of flavor which disappointed me but not bad as a side dish (but it is considered a main dish)
Gram Flour Coated Zucchini: this dish looks great in the picture but mine turned out nothing like it. I went back over the ingredient list and made sure I followed it to the letter, but mine was over spiced. The 1 tsp chili powder was obviously too much and not included in the dish that was pictured!
Spicy Chickpeas: we love this dish at a nearby Indian restaurant so I tried this recipe. It was a little too tangy for us but still pretty good.
Flaky Mint Bread: my favorite bread so far! A bit of work but worth it.
Spicy Indian bread: again, a lot of hands on work but the end product is delicious!
Carom Spiced Puffs: a little disappointed. Mine didn't puff up like the picture (some puffed a little some not at all) and the picture looks like white flour was used rather than wheat (which is called for). Otherwise, the taste was ok but I don't think I'll be making it again.
Liquid Yogurt Salad: my favorite raita! Easy to make and goes great with any spicy dish.

Some recipes are work intensive and others that can be put together with little effort. Some recipes call for ingredients that may be hard or next to impossible to acquire but most can be purchased from your local store or Asian market. This Indian cookbook is my best looking cookbook and I'm always looking through it. But my best dishes haven't come from this book.

I have been cooking Indian food for years. However, Pure and Simple recipes make the same dishes taste better. There is something about the proportion of the ingredients that gives dishes distinct flavors. The book guides me through cooking new, simple and fun dishes with the ingredients already in the house.

I find myself using the book a lot because for a working mom like me step by step direction are easy to follow and most of the dishes require minimum preparation time.

I have had this book for a few months and it is fantastic. I made a great indian meal for friends and even my indian friend thought it was delicious. The recipes are easy to follow and the pictures are beautiful. There are sections at the beginning that explained the ingredients, cooking utensils and spices. Also a great section at the end explaining techniques which is instructive and useful. Overall this book made Indian cooking fun, easy and accessible.

I have used the recipes to entertain guests and even for everyday cooking. They are delicious and healthy.
What I like most is that complicated steps where one might be even slightly confused are shown in pictures. So thanks to Mrs. Mittal, now even novices can cook a fabulous Indian meal!

I am an Indian and have been making Indian food for decades now. Usually I tend to stay away from cookbooks and rely more on family/friends/cooking blogs to get tried & tested recipes but something drew me to this book. I have to admit that this book is very well done, it has beautiful pictures, crisp and simple directions, great presentation, excellent recipes. It is certainly "pure & simple" as the name implies. So far I have gotten great reviews for every recipe I have tried from this book. I would recommend it to anyone who is a veteran in Indian cooking or a new comer.

I am happy that a friend in Boston introduced me to this book recently- I am a strict vegetarian and do enjoy cooking as well. I must say that this is the best book for the Indian cooking I have seen so far- in terms of illustrations, simplified cooking methods and the overall presentation. I have been searching for a number of recipes and some fine details which I finally found in this book. It has enough info for a novice and also for the experienced cooks who like to try out things in a different way (e.g. cooking potato subzi with different spices). This book will be very helpful for people like us who live out of India and have to depend on a few vegetables most of the year and now I have a feeling that one can do wonders with whatever vegetables are available. Kudos to Mrs. Mittal for writing such an excellent book.

However, I like to make a small suggestion- please provide cross reference (by page no.) to something which is served with a dish (e.g. chole bhature, idli with coconut chutney) etc.
Thank you.

I can't praise Mrs. Vidhu Mittal's path-breaking cook book `Pure & Simple - Homemade Indian Vegetarian Cuisine' enough. It's path-breaking because never before has an Indian cook book been able to combine innovative, healthy recipes, simple instructions, world class photography and stunning aesthetics as well as this one. As an artist and a mother / home maker I found reading this book as well as using it's recipes, utterly delightful.

The quality of the presentation is what strikes you first - layouts, pictures, fonts, colours, graphics, organization of content - all combine to create a spectacular overall impact. In techie-speak this book is to cook books what Apple is to the technology industry - stunningly attractive, chic, minimalistic in design yet rich in content and applications, and of course incredibly user friendly!

The variety and excitement that this book has bought to the meals we cook at home is immeasurable. Every type of dish that you could ever need in an Indian household is covered by Mrs. Mittal - from salads, to drinks, to main courses, to snack items, to accompaniments, to desserts - it's all in this book. Then there is the wonderful attention to detail that separates this cook book from any other I've seen in its genre:

- Hindi and English words accompanied by visuals for all kinds of spices, vegetables, lentils, and kitchen equipment - a small but simple detail that addresses a huge need in urban India where even though English may be our first language, the words that we use for food and cooking are invariably in Hindi.

- A `Cooking Processes' section that is incredibly helpful - Excellent photographs combined with easy-to-understand instructions make the book fool-proof even for a first-time cook. It takes on the small challenges of dealing with all kinds of ingredients and processes, and uses photographs with great effectiveness to help ensure that you can't go wrong!

- Additional tips and comments across the bottom of each page help take the final product of your efforts in the kitchen beyond the ordinary, and are a source of much learning!

- A `Meal Menus' section at the end that also serves as an Index. Hugely useful in helping you plan a multi course Indian meal.

The only negative I can think of, came from my carnivorous husband - who has been wishing that the author was non vegetarian!

Mrs. Mittal's cook book is one that you can safely judge by it's cover - It's pure, simple, and brilliant. If you are a fan of Indian food buy it immediately. And if you're not a fan, then just admire the wonderful aesthetic and production values!

I've had the pleasure of enjoying these vegetarian recipes for several months. The text is well written--not verbose at all--and easy to follow. There are pictures of every dish as well as step-by-step pictures for some of the more intricate instructions. You will have to find a local Indian grocer for the ingredients of some recipes, but other than that, this book makes Indian cuisine accessible even for the casual cook.

Some of my favorite recipes include:
Arhar Dal (Yellow Lentil)
Mattar Paneer (Peas with Indian Cheese)
Gajar Muttar Pulao (Carrot and Peas Pilaf)
Chawal ki Kheer (Indian Rice Pudding)
Gulab Jamun (Indian desert that looks like donut holes--definitely not a low calorie food!)

This cook book not only has fantastic recipes, it also contains a great reference section for Indian legumes, vegetables, spices, and more. It also has step by step pictures for various techniques commonly used in Indian cooking. I really enjoyed learning from it.

I don't have a lot of time to cook, but when I have a few moments to prepare something that I really want to eat, this is the book I grab. I can't eat wheat products and that's not a problem with most of the items in this book. Everything I've tried has tasted really good and I can hardly believe that I can cook what tastes like authentic Indian food (that I, a white girl, cooked).

I can't wait for the next one to come out so I can keep expanding my culinary repertoire. Yum!