This book is an extremely useful ingredient-oriented introduction to Indian cooking. It won't help you put a meal together and can't be used in isolation, and also is light on technique. However, if you've ever wondered what amchur or kholombo are, this is the book for you. Especially notable is the selection of recipes for sweets and drinks, which are very lightly treated in most Indian cookbooks. This book isn't perfect, the first printing especially has some translation and printing issues. Even so, if you can find a copy I recommend buying it. ( )

I love this book. It is organized by spice- eeach entry contains pictures of the spice as it is sold, pictures of it in its plant forms, a discusion of how it is harvested and processed, and one or two recipies. I highly reccmend it for reading pleasure, education content, as well as for the quality of the recipies. ( )