From Booklist
Southern Indian dishes are less familiar restaurant fare generally, but as India's cuisine becomes more popular, interest increases in the cooking of this region. Kingman spent her early years in the state of Madras, now called Tamil Nadu. She offers illuminating descriptions of the influences of cultural and religious traditions on food and how ingredients are mixed together to produce balance. One favorite southern Indian dish that often appears on menus, masala dosai, consists of pancakes stuffed with a potato and vegetable filling. Kingman provides directions for this and numerous other delicacies, including fish and seafood dishes, which are a cornerstone of festive Madras meals. Alice Joyce
Review
A cookbook can be many things besides the sum of its recipes: travel guide, picture book, storybook, and shopping list. This book is a bit of all of these. It is not a book for beginning cooks, even though the recipe instructions are very clear, because it assumes an advanced knowledge of cooking techniques. Quite a few spices or uncommon ingredients are needed for all recipes except sweets, so the investment in ingredients assumes a more than casual interest in Indian food. The excellent glossary is a good place to begin, both to become acquainted with any unfamiliar ingredients and to stock the pantry with missing supplies. A where-to-find ingredients' list includes sources for mail order. The short description of Madras, chapter and recipe introductions, and gray-area asides are full of food-lore, folklore, myths, and legends to give the recipes a cultural context. This is a large-format book with an attractive, easy-on-the-eyes design. The illustrations are mouthwatering, and the smell of authenticity starts with the grinding of spices. The index could be better; it lacks both cross references, which makes an entry like fish and seafood incomplete, and commas, which is unsettling and inelegant. -- From Independent Publisher
