Complete Book of Indian Cooking: 350 Recipes from the Regions of India

Classic recipes from the many regions of a diverse and culturally rich nation.

Indian cuisine is widely revered for its distinctive tastes and ingredients. The sheer size of India, combined with its history and religious diversity, is reflected in the country's cuisine. Complete Book of Indian Cooking provides hundreds of user-friendly and great-tasting recipes from all regions and cultures of this extraordinary country.

Local/regional ingredients deliver unusual flavors that satisfy the search for new tastes. Each recipe includes background information that helps the home cook become more knowledgeable about -- and comfortable with -- Indian food.

Here are examples of the hundreds of exotic, yet easy, recipes:

• Starters like fenugreek and spinach fritters (methi palak pakoras), and steamed corn bread (corn dhoklas)
• Bengali shrimp and long squash (lau chingri); fried dumplings with yogurt and chutney (pahi pakodi chaat)
• Kerala lamb biriyani; assamese roast chicken (poora kukura); Coory egg and potato curry
• Vegetarian delights like curried spinach and cheese (saag panir), and chickpea flour dumplings (besan ke gatte)
• Refreshing desserts like baked bananas with coconut and jaggery.

In addition to all the regional foods, the book features chaat the crunchy, sweet and wildly popular street food of India. The chapter on Indian meal traditions and customs rounds out this comprehensive handbook on Indian cuisine.

Suneeta Vaswani was born in Bombay and moved to the United States in the late 1970s. She is a cooking instructor and recipe developer whose writing has been featured widely in culinary publications, and author of Easy Indian Cooking. She lives in Houston, Texas.