Complete Book of Indian Cooking by Suneeta Vaswani

My rating: 4 of 5 spoons
gggg 

I haven’t had a huge amount of exposure to Indian cooking, but I have liked everything I’ve tried so far. 350 recipes? Yes, thank you! My daughters were thrilled to find Naan again (one of their all time favorite breads!), but I was very disappointed not to find Gulab Jamoon. I had this delectable dessert at an Indian festival in Texas of all places and fell in love. Unfortunately, I haven’t had them since. I was really hoping for a recipe for them in this book, but it didn’t happen. There are, however, some lovely desserts included, so all is not lost!

There is a nice section on common ingredients in the front of the book that explains about many of the ingredients you will find often in the recipes and is followed by Spices, Spice Blends and Herbs. Recipes are included for four of the spice blends, which is nice. Mail order sources are at the end of the book before the index.

The book is laid out according to type of dish (Appetizers, Chat, Beans and Lentils, Rice Cereal and Breads, Eggs Chicken and Meat, Fish and Seafood, Vegetables, Salads Raitas and Chutneys, Sweets and Beverages), but then each section is divided into regions and these are color coded: red for the Northern regions, orange for East, green for South and blue for West. This is particularly handy for finding dishes from certain regions.

This is a great book for people who love Indian cooking or just want to try something new. It’s easy to follow, so I would even recommend it to novice cooks.

I received a copy of this book from Robert Rose for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.