The Book Depository Vegetarian India by Madhur Jaffrey

Author: A. F. H.

Rating: 5

Review: This is an excellent cookbook for home cooks of all levels. First off, here’s some demographic information so you know where I’m coming from: I’m a mom with a school-aged family, and an experienced home cook. We are not vegetarian, but we eat mostly vegetarian meals, consuming a small quantity of meat or fish maybe once a week usually as a flavorful accent. I tend to prepare small, light, vegetable-based meals with a focus on intense flavors. I love variety and try to cook multiple brand-new recipes every week, interspersing them with dishes from a very large collection of known favorites. So I’m always looking for good cookbooks which have new techniques and flavor combinations I can add to my repertoire, new dishes I can interweave into a week’s menu, new treatments for familiar vegetables, an introduction to new-to-me ingredients, and versatile recipes I can experiment with to make variations of my own. I am less concerned about the authenticity of recipes than I am about the tastiness, variety, and difficulty of the recipes. So I can’t comment on the authenticity of these recipes, or whether they are unusual or common, or about how well the different regions of India are represented. I am mostly commenting from the perspective of a home cook who is always looking for new, delicious, versatile recipes — especially vegetarian ones. Madhur Jaffrey’s Vegetarian India caught my eye every time I saw it in the bookstore, and I’d flip through it and see recipe after recipe that I wanted to make. Finally, after many months, I bought it. When the book arrived I read through it, cover to cover, making a note of the recipes I wanted to make on a small notepad by my side. I do this with every cookbook I buy, and I usually end up with 5 to 10 recipes I want to try in the next week or two. But with this cookbook I ended up with A HUNDRED AND ONE recipes on my list — I wanted to make most of the recipes in this book right off the bat. They ALL looked exciting, flavorful, and light. And as I started cooking them, I found that this impression was correct. Here are some of the specific aspects I like about this cookbook: * Straightforward recipes that are easy to interweave with other types I've made dish after dish from this cookbook and found them to be easy, flavorful, light and manageable for a weeknight (and many are suitable for guests, too). And more, these were approachable dishes that I felt confident intermingling with the rest of my cooking, instead of feeling like I needed to put on a whole Indian spread. I could simply add an Indian dish or two from this cookbook to an evening’s dinner — serve a dal alongside sautéed bok choy with miso ginger sauce, or chana dal pancakes next to a Southwestern zucchini soup, or spicy Indian cucumbers on top of a composed salad along with diced avocado, kalamata olives, and feta cheese for a quick no-fuss Wednesday dinner when everyone’s hungry and wants to eat NOW. This cookbook made it easy to mix and match recipes like this. I own one of Madhur Jaffrey’s earlier cookbooks, called “An Invitation to Indian Cooking,” which is a lovely cookbook with many delicious recipes, but I found many of them to be so time-consuming that I didn’t make them very often, and when I did I felt that the amount of labor involved meant that I should really make a whole Indian spread. So I’d make five or six dishes that we'd eat over the course of a week or so, and then I’d be done with the cookbook for another six months. “Vegetarian India,” on the other hand, was so approachable and straightforward I could just grab it for spontaneous ideas on a weeknight and weave it into our everyday dinners. * Good introductions to each recipe Each recipe has a paragraph or two explaining what the recipe is like and where it comes from. These descriptions help me choose what to cook. Each recipe’s introduction also includes some suggestions about other dishes to serve alongside it to turn it into a full meal — add a chutney or flatbread, or serve it over rice, or serve it next to a cauliflower dish or with a dal, etc. I appreciate these suggestions very much. * Readable, functional, easy-to-use layout The recipes are usually on just one page, so there’s no need to turn pages. Each one has an informative introductory paragraph at the top, ingredients on the left, and step-by-step instructions in numbered paragraphs in the middle of the page. This makes it very easy to follow the recipes, especially when moving quickly around a kitchen. The font is quite readable: the ingredients and instructions are in black type on a white background, with the instructions in a slightly larger font size. The title and introductions are red on white in a different, sans-serif font. There are no fancy fonts or cluttered backgrounds interfering with the text. I find it quite easy to read, and critically, quite easy to find my place again on the page when I return to the cookbook. The pages are made of heavy, glossy paper. I've spattered hot oil on them and spilled on them and they stand up to the abuse. The binding is strong -- I haven't lost any pages, and none are even loose -- and it stays open to the page you want, even for recipes at the beginning or end of the book. This is a cookbook that is meant to be used. There are a number of beautiful photographs, but only a minority of the recipes have them. This does not bother me too much as the description in the introduction usually helps me understand what kind of dish the recipe will produce. * Most recipes draw from a basic set of ingredients The recipes in this cookbook draw from a modest set of Indian ingredients — once you have those you can make most of the recipes in the book. I’ve come across many cookbooks that require an exotic incredient which is never used again in that cookbook. So I end up with an expensive jar of unicorn hairs or toasted phoenix feathers which sits rebukingly in my cabinet for months, if not years, to come. Not so this cookbook. For spices, she uses cumin, coriander, turmeric, chili powder, mustard seeds, and a couple others like fennel seed, cardamom, and dried red chilis. If you can keep these on hand, plus a couple types of dried lentils (which are pretty cheap), fresh ginger, garlic, cilantro, and a few fresh chilis, you can make most of the recipes in this book. A suggestion: Get a spice grinder if you don’t have one already. Fresh-ground spices are much more flavorful than pre-ground spices. I use a spice grinder for all my ground cumin, coriander, fennel etc. I use a simple coffee grinder (dedicated for spice-only use): a Krups 3-ounce Electric Spice and Coffee Grinder, costs about $20 on Amazon, but I’m sure there are many others out there that would work just as well. * Lots of variations for familiar vegetables I am always looking for new ways to use familiar vegetables, like carrots, green beans, cucumbers, peas, spinach, and so forth. Madhur Jaffrey offers lots of ways to cook these, and many of these recipes are no more difficult than what you’d find in, say, Deborah Madison’s "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" (another of my favorite cookbooks). For example, Deborah Madison’s “In a Pinch Cucumber Salad" from "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" involves tossing the cucumbers with olive oil and vinegar or fresh lemon juice along with some dill, salt, and pepper. Easy, flavorful, and refreshing, and one of my go-to ways to whip off a quick cucumber salad. Well, Madhur Jaffrey’s "Cucumber Spears” recipe, which is easily converted into a cucumber salad by just chopping them into bite-sized pieces instead of spears, involves tossing cucumbers with ground cumin, chili powder, and lemon juice, then pouring on some sizzling oil in which you’ve briefly fried mustard seeds, whole cumin seeds, and curry leaves (I’ve made it with and without the curry leaves and both versions are good.) The end result is a crunchy, refreshing cucumber salad with unexpected zings of chili and a tang from the lemon juice and a rich depth that comes from the toasted cumin and mustard seeds. I served this at a big summer potluck and it was a huge hit — I got a lot of recipe requests. And it was no more difficult than the vinaigrette and herb version. It can be taken in all sorts of directions, too — use lime juice instead of lemon, add jicama cubes, add cilantro, pump up the chili powder for more zing or use chipotle for a smoky accent, or eliminate the chili for spice-averse relatives, cut the cucumbers into coins, diagonals, paper-thin slices, half-moons… the variations are endless. All from a single, versatile recipe. Or take carrots and peas, very familiar vegetables. Madhur Jaffrey’s “Everyday Carrots and Peas” involves heating some cumin in oil in a skillet, adding the carrots and peas, then after a brief stir fry adding ground coriander, turmeric, chili powder, and salt, then cook till tender. This is barely more difficult than tossing them with oil and parsley but the flavor profile is completely different. It’s perfect for jazzing up a Tuesday night. Or if all you’ve got on hand is frozen peas? Try the "Simple Marwari-style Peas" — cook the peas with cumin seeds, ginger, and green chilis. There! Now you’ve taken a simple freezer staple and made it delicious with very little effort. And again, the variations are endless. * Lots of dals I love the rich, deep flavors and the heartiness of dals. A dal can easily anchor a vegetarian meal, and it’s very versatile: thinned a bit it becomes a soup, let it thicken and it’s a stew you can serve over rice or with flatbreads, let it thicken some more and you can shape it into patties and fry it, or turn it into a ‘base’ on which you can place interesting toppings — think strips of roasted red peppers, diced boiled egg tossed with herbs, runny poached egg sprinkled with chili flakes and nestled in a hollow on top of the dal, spiced lamb meatballs, grilled summer squash etc. (Purists would probably re

Author: R. G. Barker

Rating: 4

Review: I must admit, this book was not quite what I was expecting. However, I do have a soft spot for Madhur Jaffrey. I am an ex-pat Englishman now living in New Zealand, thinking about eating a lot more vegetarian curries. What better place to start than Madhur for an Englishman? She is pretty much a national institution in the UK, and her books demand respect. And I am willing to give that respect. I honestly never knew that there were so many choices for "home cooked" Vege dishes. A very well presented book that I will treasure in my collection of world wide cookery books.