I (a German) prepare Indian food for more than 30 years - friends, that grew up in India enlightened and thaught me this. I have plenty of Indian cookbooks, from all over the world. I prepared so many Indian dishes, poultry, meat, fish, vegetarian. Indian cuisine is my favourite one. And I went to unnumbered Indian restaurants worldwide.
After I got Atul Kochar's "Simple Indian - The taste of India's new cuisine", I, of course, read all the recipes first, than prepared the "Spicy chicken curry with spinach" (page 63).I cannot number the chicken curries that I did or ate in my life - all very fine. But this is the best that I have ever done or tasted. The rest of his recipes, yet to come, sounds so good and extraordinary -in this small way of applying different spices, the heart of Indian food - that I will prepare at least 80% of them.
For all not-native English speakers - if you can manage an Indian cookbook in English, pls. buy this one! You don't need any other. But please, you need access to buying the ingredients - otherwise the outcome will never be the way is is supposed to be. There is no substitute - Indian's never use ready-to-go-mixed "curries" - all your blend of different spices makes your own "curry" - in India every family has basically their own blend.
Despite all of this praise (I never write reviews - way too busy for this), it is a wonderful book with beautiful pictures - a nice present to anyone that likes to cook!
Thank you Mr. Kochar