50 Great Curries of India

This book is gorgeous to look at - and drool over - but its real value to me is the generic curry recipe at the front: dead easy instructions, basic ingredient lists tweaked for the protein type ie lamb, beef or fish. ( )

I really like this book. The front matter is a really interesting description about how Indian Cuisine has evolved. It's interesting from the point of view that, when this book was first written (in 1994?), the food that most of us associate with Indian restaurants in the UK was mainly dishes developed for the UK market based mainly on food from the Punjab region. What the author describes is an even richer culinary history with great regional variations. The tandor, for example, which is the basis of the Tandorri food that we all know and love is quite rare in some regions. I think that in the last couple of years there has been a real change in Indian Restaurants so that we're seeing far more regional dishes and styles. I guess the market is so saturated that there is a real need to stand out from the crowd but it's interesting that this book was published more than a decade ago.

I also liked the description of the philosophy of Indian food - that it is used in a holistic approach to health and that food will be prescribed by healers and only if this fails will medicine be resorted to. I've always said curry has healing properties :-).. The author moves from the philosophy to the basic principles of Indian cookery as the book gets more practical and then moves into the recipes.

The recipes themselves are easy to follow. Our first try at one was the Lamb and Plum dish - it was quite complicated with lots of different spices and ingredients but they worked really well together (particularly good over xmas as it contains cloves, cinnamon and plums). The result was delish and I can't wait to try some of the other dishes. The photography is really good as well (I'm a sucker for good food photography which is why I bought this book in the first place). Top marks! ( )