Indian Spice Kitchen: Essential Ingredients and Over 200 Authentic Recipes

Presenting more than two hundred authentic Indian recipes, an illustrated cookbook explains how to use a wide range of herbs, nuts, spices, vinegars, and other special ingredients to create distinctive Indian dishes, including soups, breads, vegetable and meat dishes, desserts, and beverages. 25,000 first printing.

Most people recognize the indispensable role of spices to Indian cookery, but few realize just how vast an assortment of spices and herbs pervade the subcontinent's foods. Bharadwaj categorizes Indian seasonings and nonmeat foodstuffs into spices, spice mixtures, dried herbs, fruits and vegetables, nuts, dals and pulses, cereals and flours, and miscellaneous families. For each item, she provides a description, history, botanic classification, provenance, uses, and some typical Indian recipes featuring the seasoning. Full-color enlargements make each spice and herb easy to identify. Many herbs carry reasonably familiar names, excepting exotica such as edible silver foil. Bharadwaj's recipes require minimal experience with Indian cooking, but may frustrate those without access to fairly comprehensive Indian food markets. This volume's exhaustive pictorial tabulation of Indian foods makes it an important addition to any library cooking reference collection, especially those serving South Asian populations. Mark Knoblauch

Bharadwaj's lavishly illustrated book is a guide to more than 100 ingredients basic to Indian cooking, from spices and spice mixtures to beans and grains; some will be unfamiliar even to those who do a lot of Indian cooking. Most are given a two-page spread, with color photographs of the ingredient and of a dish or two made from it. Scenes of India and its people are scattered throughout the text, and the accompanying recipes exemplify the diversity of India's regional cuisines. Bharadwaj's text is informative and well written, but, unfortunately, the recipe style is awkward, and there are a number of Britishisms. Nevertheless, this attractive volume should be an invaluable resource; for most collections. Gadia was born in India but now lives in the Midwest; a clinical dietitian, she also teaches Indian cooking. Her recipes for authentic Indian home cooking are easy to make and low in fat and calories. Despite the plethora of low-fat books published recently, there have not been many on Indian food; this may be the only Indian cookbook for diabetics (food exchanges as well as nutritional analyses are included with every recipe). Although the editing could have been more polished, Gadia's unintimidating style and simple recipes should appeal; for larger and special collections.
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