Curry and Chilli Cookbook (Step-by-step) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This book really misses the mark. The foods lack the flavor and heat that is usually associated with Indian cuisine. Substitutions have been made for some ingredients and some spices have just been left out of recipies where the impact of the seasonings is important. I would not recommend buying this book for any reason

I have been cooking for years and consider myself a picky foodie. The recipes in this book are outstanding. Everything I made out of this book was excellent.
If you are interested in eating tasty menus then this cook book is for you.

The opening blurb of this book is worth mention, because it's rather laughable:

Quote:
"The confident cooking promise of success. Welcome to the world of confident cooking, where recipes are double tested by our team of home economists to achieve a high standard of success, and delicious recipes every time."

Ok, first the good:

* Lots of photos.
* Easy instructions.
* Nutritional info on servings.

Now the bad, and sadly there's a LOT of it.

NOT-AUTHENTIC: First of all, a book on curry that fails to mention that in the native culture, eating beef runs contrary to Hindu, Buddhist and Jainist religious laws is guilty of gross negligence. That's like having a book on Jewish cuisine and including recipes for things like pork chops in suet, cheese burgers with bacon, etc. Read carefully ... BEEF IS TABOO in authentic Indian cuisine. It was incumbent on the authors to explain that, so that some clueless reader won't commit the faux pas of gushing about (much less serving) a beef curry to a Hindi friend. 'Confident cooking' & 'high standards' indeed.

CLUELESSNESS: Their, ahem 'team of home economists' (translation: under qualified moonlighting housewives) obviously hadn't done significant research on the cuisine they were assembling recipes for. Obviously they couldn't even be bothered to have it proofread by someone who speaks Hindi or cooks Indian with any degree of cultural familiarity. How do I know ? If the plethora of beef recipes wasn't obvious enough, their recipe for "Rogan Josh" is yet another dead dive away. Here's what they SHOULD have said - "Rogan Josh" is a classic traditional meat curry from the Kashmir area. Loosely translated from Hindi, the name means "Fat" & "Warming" ... which implies (in the same way that "Scampi Style" implies sautéing shrimp in garlic and butter) FATTY cuts of lamb (or goat), slow simmered ON THE BONE, in a rich curry that contains spices known for their 'WARMING' properties (i.e., black cardamom, cayenne, clove, cinnamon, garlic, pepper, bay, etc). The recipe they included ? Boneless leg of lamb (so much for 'on the bone'), all fat removed (so much for 'rogan'), only 1 tbs oil, and rather than making a curry base up front with freshly toasted spices they call for dumping in some garam marsala powder at the end (poor technique, lousy results), along with tomatoes and yogurt (doesn't belong in the recipe), and then garnishing it with slivered almonds and cilantro (ditto). Sure, it'll look pretty, and it'll taste vaguely like a curry ... but it is most assuredly NOT Rogan Josh. Not even close. There's a word for that - it's called Incompetence.

For another example, their recipe for Naan (traditional flat bread) is equally anemic and off-base. It uses the wrong type of flour, includes (gasp) egg, omits the requisite whey and/or yogurt, and is baked on a baking sheet in the oven (which renders it tough and dryish) rather than slapped into a well oiled cast iron griddle (a passable everyday substitute for an authentic tandoor) until blistered but still pliable. It's supposed to be served brushed with ghee (clarified butter), and there are all sorts of wonderful variations ... none of which they mention. A clueless recipe, totally devoid of accuracy, finesse, or even a meaningful explanation - just a list of ingredients, followed by minimal directions yielding weak results. So yes, it's a flat bread - but NO, its NOT authentic Naan.

Ok, I've rambled a bit, so let me briefly overview a bunch of other flaws before wrapping up. As it is, I'm not even going to waste my time dissecting the comparably anemic job they did coving the other half of the topic mentioned in their title (chili) ...

* There's no recipe index, nor are the recipes presented in any discernable order, alphabetic or otherwise. In other words, it's a completely random and largely useless jumble of eye candy.

* Photo errors abound. For instance - the curried chicken pie on p.52-53 calls for 2 crusts, but the photo shows a pie with only one crust. Pies are not native to Indian cuisine either, but since I already beat that point to death earlier, I'll let it slide.

* Even their ingredient overview section (randomly located in the middle of their section on curry recipes) is woefully anemic and ill-considered, and only includes 2 pages of material - most of it photos. Picking 1 ingredient at random (cardamom) I see that they only mention the green variety (which has a flavor reminiscent of eucalyptus with a hint of lemon). There's no mention of the black variety, which has a completely different and unmistakable flavor (which has a deeply smokey, musky, leathery note). Naturally, none of the recipes that typically use the latter include it (ex: lamb saag on p.13 is supposed to include it, and by the way they don't cook their spinach nearly long enough for that particular dish), and the recipe appears to suffer as a result. Pathetic. In addition to omitting a number of key ingredients that are reasonably easy to find (if only by mail order), they also include and use several ingredients that are very uncommon and difficult to find ... like fresh turmeric root and fresh galangal root. I live in an area where there are no less than 20 Indo-Pak and Thai restaurants and groceries within a 40 minute drive, and even *I* can't get either of those 2 ingredients in their fresh form (nor even the latter in dried form). Obviously the authoresses made no attempt to gauge the typical availability of the various ingredients that they chose, apparently semi-randomly, to include in their book, nor do they include information on how to locate merchants who might carry those items.

* None of the recipes have 'head notes' (discussion/overview) - they just give a big eye-candy photo on the opposite page, and jump right into the ingredients list and directions. Then again, the ability to write head notes for a given recipe requires a certain modicum of understanding about the recipe that the authoresses apparently lack.

BOTTOM LINE: This book demonstrates the problem with books written by faceless teams on behalf of a publishing company - there's no individual responsibility to do a good job (no rewards for competence and success, no punishment for mediocrity and failure) ... in short, it's the communist curse, in book form. This book has lots of pretty pictures, but when it comes to grasping the cuisines they're writing about, the team that prepared this book demonstrated their collective incompetence. "Eye candy" is just about the only positive thing I can say about this book. The authors picked an expert flavor palate (Indian cuisine), and then painted their recipes with the skill and finesse of kiddies barely out of their finger painting stage.

Buy it for coffee table decoration only.