India: The Cookbook by Pushpesh Pant - Hardcover

It great book for Indian cuisine

Molto contento del libro e delle ricette. Finora il miglior ricettario di cucina Indiana che abbia mai comprato.

Um livro completo, cobrindo as mais diferentes receitas da India. Encontrei nele receitas fáceis de fazer. Deliciosas.

This cookbook has a great number of full-colour photographs, but the bulk of the tome is comprised of pages which appear nearly like newsprint on single-coloured paper. It feels like a sort of food-based telephone directory, and I, for one, find its utter lack of pretentiousness completely charming. Haven't we all seen enough overproduced high-gloss vanity projects chock full of beautifully staged food which nonetheless seems absolutely unappetizing? Use your imagination to great effect here and learn the ingredients by working with them in a hands-on manner. Experience will prove a far better teacher than following a book which reads like a wiring diagram. Some of the descriptions are a bit vague, true, but to pad a 815-page doorstop like this would be a bit unnecessary. The recipes are fascinating, and history about the food traditions of various regions is at the beginning of the book so as to not weigh down the recipes themselves with idle nattering about someone's 17-stop train journey or their pilgrimage to get a single leaf from a tree on a mountaintop or such nonsense. You're here to learn about food, right? Then roll up your sleeves and hop to it!

This is not my first Phaidon Press book, and that was for a reason. They are like an encyclopaedia of ethnic food, written by a subject-matter expert. But as well as their 'data' content, they are masterpieces of graphic design and typesetting, as befits a printing house that started as a publisher of Art books - beautifully put together, with quirky little touches - Mexico comes with a paper lace outer cover, India comes in a shopping bag of the sort you would see in any Indian market. Page references are like the little paper price sticker you see in every ethnic market. Well organised, beautifully photographed, they are as much a pleasure to read as they are to use for reference. My wife is not a cook and she couldn't wait to browse through it and find me recipes to make, excitedly exclaiming over some as-yet untried regional speciality. From a cooks logistical perspective, every recipe details the number of item or servings, the region the dish comes from, the reference page for photos, etc. in a clear easy-to-read font, with two ribbon bookmarks - one for dinner, one for starter or dessert. Despite its size the paper used is relatively lightweight, without feeling it is going to be delicate or see-through, so the book stays open at the page. Well made, stitched and glued, it will last for years. Now I need to save up to buy China and The Silver Spoon to go with my other Phaidon books. And maybe Greece, Turkey and Mezze... I need a second job.

This is just an amazing book, full of love for the recipes contained within it, and Pushpesh Pant must have spent a huge amount of time and effort in putting it together. The publisher has also gone to great effort to make the book characterful. In a 30 page introduction, each region of India is explored, telling the reader a bit about its character, history, and distinctive cuisine. The main part of the book is the recipes, which are well-organised. The main sections are arranged as appetisers, main dishes, pulses, breads, and so on. Within each section, a lot of effort has been taken to group dishes by type, or by main ingredient, depending on what makes most sense. For example, all of the pakora recipes are grouped together into 10 pages. All of the main dishes where okra is the main ingredient are gathered together. This makes it really easy to browse, looking at a dry potato dish from Punjab, or a slightly different Delhi dish of potato and yoghurt, or a potato dish from Kerala involving coconut... you get the idea. To give you an idea of the depth of the book, there are 54 recipes for pickles, chutneys and raita, which vary from requiring a few ingredients, to over 10, and from 10 minutes preparation, to hours. There's something in here for everyone. Want to make a quick half-hour lunch of potato curry with some plain parathas? It's in here. Want to make a pan-Indian thali of ancient and modern dishes? You can do that. Or maybe you'd like to plan an intimate meal centred on a particular region of India, to make it as authentic as possible? I think that the main advantage of the book is that it gives you so many ideas, you aren't going to make the boring chicken curry you always make, you might decide instead to go to the supermarket and buy some taro roots and jackfruits! The paper quality is obviously a conscious design decision to make it have a slightly rough feel, and it is not an indication of poor publishing. Each section is also printed on a different coloured paper, which is a nice touch. People have also commented that the photos should appear by the recipes. I disagree - the idea of having a photo of a bench containing 5 or 6 different plates of food is so you can see them with reference to other dishes. All pictures are labelled with the page numbers where you can find the recipes, and the recipes are labelled with a camera icon and a page number so you can find the photos. It's fine. Finally, those reviews indicating the amount of errors, quite simply I don't believe in them. The errors are there, of course - but they are so infrequent and so obvious that it in no way detracts from the quality of the work as a whole. There are 1,000 recipes - the hit rate with flawless instructions is actually very high. Sure, if you want to go out and buy 10 cartons of yoghurt for the morsel of chicken you are cooking, be my guest. I'm exaggerating a bit - but there's some common sense needed here. Like the recipe that forgets to tell you to combine one main part of the dish with another main part of the dish. Please, this is not NASA, we are not making a moon buggy. We are making a pakora, just spend some time studying the WHOLE recipe before starting it! It's a pleasure to just flick through the book - I've been spending all weekend just browsing the recipes (and cooking some, too), it's been great!