Cookbook recommendation|Indian Home Cooking

Indian Home Cooking: A Fresh Introduction to Indian Food

~This is the twenty-fourth post in a series running through the month of June 2009 in which I attempt to post once a day for the month.~

We bought Indian Home Cooking: A Fresh Introduction to Indian Food by Suvir Saran and Stephanie Lyness a few years ago and almost got rid of it in one of our book purges. We had made a couple of recipes and they were ok, but we hadn’t been really inspired to keep cooking from it. Because I am a pack rat, I usually insist that we give any cookbook we’re about to toss one more chance, and everyone around here is glad that my hoarding tendencies kept this one from the Goodwill. I don’t remember the recipe that we made that turned it all around for this book, but it was delightful, as have been all the recipes we’ve made from this volume since then.*

If you want to learn to cook Indian food, this is a great book. If you want to learn to cook cheaply, this is a great book. It’s a great book.**

Cheers.

*Except for the Corn Curry! Under no circumstances should you make the corn curry. It’s gross. But everything else we’ve made (which is most of the book) has been fantastic.
**One small hint/disclaimer – most of the recipes call for a lot of liquid to be added at some point in the cooking. Mostly, you can either cut this way back or sometimes even skip it all together. We also occasionally add coconut milk instead of water – just depends on our mood and the dish. But there’s not much that isn’t made better with coconut milk.