Customer Reviews

The Turmeric Trail: Recipes and Memories from an Indian Childhood

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

 

 

As another south indian settled in USA the book brought back very vivid and warm memories of southern india and mumbai. While the recipes are as standard and perhaps lacking in detail in some ways, the stories and memories associated with them are very real and common across many south indian households. The introduction with the grandmother's story brought tears to my eyes - and i also loved the flowing and somewhat natural way of relating food to people (the sindhi lady, sardari vendor) and the strong familial ties to his sister and family that are expressed through food.
That said - indian lifestyle, however, is fraught with tradition and rigid, lot of times oppressive beliefs that are not obvious and very hard to come to terms with, especially if you are a woman. I dont' believe it is within the scope of this book to address those issues but i do believe in some places the author tends to paint life as pinker than it is (arranged marriage, life with in laws, caste/community related issues).

I am not Indian (unlike many of the other reviewers it seems) and had very little experience with Indian food (and had never cooked it myself) before I got this book from the local library.
So far, every recipe I've tried has come out phenomenally, but of course some of them weren't quite as easy as the recipe made it sound. But they still came out great. I am now in the market for this book because I consider it a MUST HAVE for any home cook.
I also love the fact that in the whole book, there are only 5 recipes that include meat (that's not counting the fish/shellfish recipes since my partner and I still eat those). It's very hard to find a good ethnic cookbook of any kind that is at least mostly vegetarian.

From the Orange County Register
November 3, 2005

by Judy Bart Kancigor, author of Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family

Picture yourself halfway around the world, isolated from family and friends, living in a completely different culture where your holidays are unknown. How do you spend your first Christmas?

In 1982 cookbook author and award-winning cooking instructor Raghavan Iyer, then 21, left his native India to study in the United States. Two months later, as his family in Bombay celebrated the joyous festival of Diwali, he sat in his room, consumed by loneliness and self-pity.

"Everybody was back home celebrating, having a good time and feasting on pal paysam (creamy rice pudding). Instead I was studying with a Cadbury's milk chocolate and potato chips."

Diwali, celebrated this week - the New Year falls tomorrow on the fourth day - is as important to Hindus, Sikhs and Jains as Christmas is to Christians. Known as the "festival of lights" - celebrants decorate the home with oil lamps - the holiday signifies the renewal of life. New clothes are worn, fireworks are exploded and sweets are exchanged.

"It also signifies the homecoming of Rama, who was banned into a forest for 14 years," explained Iyer by phone from his home in Minnesota where he is currently working on a new book, "660 Indian Curries", to be published in early 2008 by Workman. "But the bigger part of the celebration is a tribute to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth."

Iyer is the author of "Betty Crocker's Indian Home Cooking" (Wiley) and "The Turmeric Trail: Recipes and Memories from an Indian Childhood" (St. Martin's Press), which was the 2003 James Beard Awards Finalist for best international cookbook. Little wonder. More than a cookbook, "The Turmeric Trail" is a deeply personal, vividly recalled love letter to his family, to his native Mumbai (Bombay) and to the exquisite and varied flavors of his mother's and grandmother's cooking.

"...hold my hand along my turmeric-brick road," he beckons, "yellowed with ageless stories, perfumed with spicy aromas, and peppered with succulent dishes."

In "The Turmeric Trail" Iyer brings Diwali to life through the memories of his eight-year-old self arising with excitement. "In our family it was the tradition to wake up before sunrise and burst firecrackers early in the morning," he told me. "So you can see how popular we were with the neighbors, but it was something they expected."

His mother would always make fried noodles called sev for the holiday, he recalled. "You push the dough through a sev nari, a mold that is common in Indian cuisine - you can use a cookie spritzer - to produce strands as thick as spaghetti."

On Diwali friends and neighbors exchange sweets, "everything from kaaju katri (cashew squares) to gulab jamun, which are like beignets soaked in sugar syrup and flavored with cardamom or even saffron, to roasted garbanzo bean flour bars called mysore pak," noted Iyer. "We'd take plates of them to friends and neighbors, and they'd empty our plates and fill them up with sweets from their own kitchens."

To continue the tradition, Iyer will host a Diwali party this weekend. "During the day I will make the noodles with my son Robert, who is 6 1/2," he said. "I always make it a point to wear something traditional, and Robert will too. In southern India, where my family comes from, men wear a wrap-around garment that falls to the ground called a dhoti. For the holiday we buy new clothes and dress up." And of course it wouldn't be Diwali without his mother's pal paysam.

PAL PAYSAM (CREAMY RICE PUDDING)
From "The Turmeric Trail" by Raghavan Iyer

1/2 gallon whole milk
1/2 cup uncooked basmati or long-grain rice
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk

In a large, wide-rimmed saucepan or Dutch oven, bring milk and rice to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly to prevent scorching. Continue cooking milk down, 30 to 35 minutes, stirring occasionally and scraping sides of pan to release collected milk solids, until milk is reduced to 5 cups. Pour in condensed milk and continue simmering about 15 minutes. Serve warm or chilled. Serves 6.

The Turmeric Trail 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 The Turmeric Trail 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.

I personally know the author and as a culinary professional have worked with him. I have the highest regard for his work and purchased this book as a gift for a friend who has just returned from a trip to India. Outstanding cookbook and recipes!

This was Raghavan's second book, his first being the Betty Crocker Guide
to Indian Cooking (low church), and his third being the 5-star 660 Curries book.

In this one, he really presents more of a collection of stories
(seen through some very soft focus rose colored lenses) of his youth.
The recipes are good, but definitely concentrate on Indian street food and
family cooking. They're definitely a step above the BC guide, but
this is NOT a comprehensive survey of Indian cooking, but merely
a glimpse. The book is a lot less educational and more entertaining
than 660.

Keep in mind that he's vegetarian, and most (but not all) of the recipes
are oriented that way.

I have no idea why there are 11 copies, starting at $57. I managed to
luck out and find a hardcover for under $10.

Sorry, I hated this. I actually tried out some recipes and they did not turn out well. I am an Indian and cook quite a bit of Indian food. So I was dissapointed. I felt the recipes slanted heavily towards "street food" rather than a good range of Indian cuisine.

I couldnt stand the text - it reads more like one of those travelogues that gives the "foreigners" a romanticised view of India. Blah, blah, blah ... I found the prose heavy-handed and annoying.