Customer Reviews

A Taste of Madras: A South Indian Cookbook

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

 

 

For anyone who already owns an Indian cookbook - and the place to start is Madhur Jaffey's encyclopedic Indian Cooking - this is a rich source of authentic South Indian recipes. I have tried most of them, and have yet to be disappointed. Be warned though, these recipes produce hotter dishes than most Indian cookbooks, and assume a basic familiarity with Indian cooking techniques. South Indian cooking is associated with vegetarian dishes, but this is Tamil cooking, and there are as many meat dishes as vegetarian, including beef, lamb, pork, chicken and duck. As for seafood, there are wonderful crab, lobster, shrimp and fish recipes. This is an excellent source of recipes for an underappreciated region of Indian cooking.

A huge disappointment!! If you are a Madrasi/looking for authentic or serious Madrasi - tasting dishes, forget it!! This will be O.K for somebody wanting to imitate Madrasi/south indian cooking or for a brand new beginner. Most of the recipes call for couple of basic spices (eg. chilli pd.,turmeric pd.,ginger-garlic)...That's it! But, the names given to these recipes are madrasi-sounding definitely.Any way what kind of cookbook author would call a curry leaf- neem leaf!! I am pretty sure it was not a printing error.

As a person brought up on South Indian cuisine, but now living in the West, I found this cookbook invaluable in reprising the tastes of my home, and introducing me to some new dishes that I had never tried before. It was clearly written and all the recipes I attempted were very delicious. It has cemented my belief that South Indian cuisine is the 'best kept secret' for the modern food connoisseur.

I can't believe that this book even got published. This just shows that anybody who claims know how to cook can publish a book. The editors, the publishers, for that matter the Author herself doesn't have any clue what Authentic means. I am from Madras. I come a family of fabulous people who cook great food and I am Chef. I love to collect books and I was flabbergasted to go through this book. All her so-called Tamil names are not even Tamil. Names like 'Rungaswamy Meen Kolomba', its supposed to be 'Rangaswamy Meen Kuzhambhu', its 'Thayir sadam' and not 'Thayar satham',.I shows that she is totally confused. I really pity the students who learn from her. The pictures in this books reveals the result of the recipes, utter nonsense. The end product is not supposed to look what she has depicted and that not authentic crispy Dosa or chappthi. She must have compiled it thinking that nobody is going to even question what she has written. For those people who say that they have tried and liked the recipes, unfortunately, they are not authentic recipes and it is not in any way authentic. Claiming that its Madras food and not one recipe has a mention about 'Curry leaves'. You can make authentic tasting South Indian dishes without Curry leaves. I am so frustrated that I bought this book and I hope my fellow members don't do the same mistake I did. Its a book I'll have for a collection called 'how not to write so-called authentic cook books'. Its a disgrace to South Indian cooks and the cuisine.

I would give average to this book. the author says the taste of Madras but truly Madras has more taste and culture in its cuisine.
I have tried a couple of dishes - they turned out okay. Authentic Madras food would also be good healthy vegetarian diet. This book does not come anywhere near this.

As a tamil Sri-Lankan-American, I was looking for a cookbook that would give me dishes that were more spicier than what you would find in most north indian styled restaurants. This book turned out great. The recipes are very easy to follow and the curries turn out well even if you aren't exact about what you're adding. Some recipes take a long time but worth it.

A Taste of Madras is one of my favorite cookbooks and I have scores of Indian cookbooks, as I'm sort of a gourmet chef. I wrote a cooking column for a sailing magazine for a couple years and one of my favorite articles was my "Two Ways to Tandoori" which you can read in one of my "Amazon So You'd Like to Guides," if you want. Tandoori chicken is just delicious. Anyway, while I was making the guide, I listed fifty cookbooks from my collection. I have more. I know, I know, one would think a couple books would be enough, but it's sort of an obsession with me, making food taste great and I just love to see how others have done it.

While I was doing the guide, I pulled out all my Indian Cookbooks, had them all stacked around me. Then I decided to pull out all the ones I didn't think I could live without. It came to an even dozen and A Taste of Madras was one of the books. The recipes are just divine. I've never been to India, been a lot of places, but never there. Delhi, Bombay, Ganges, names that just ring with adventure. I imagine I'm there every time I cook up something Indian. I can feel the smells as they wrap their delicious flavors all around the kitchen, or galley, if I'm cooking on board the sailboat my husband Dub and I live on half the year. You won't go wrong with this book. Check it out. Check out my other eleven too. Cook up something from India tonight, taste the adventure.