Cooking with Camellia Panjabi's "50 Great Curries of India&#34

[Okanagancook]

This is a new cookbook to my Indian cookbook collection. Which recipes are your favourites? I am making a dinner on Saturday and want to include a few dishes from this book.

[bague25]

This is one of the best books written on Indian Cuisine. She really has well researched the recipes and it's a nice panorama of Indian regional dishes. I appreciated the pistachio korma... but I must say, most recipes from this book have worked well for me :-)

[patrickamory]

I own it but have never cooked from it... I find myself gravitating toward Jaffrey, Sahni, Batra, Kaimal or online sources.

Mouthwatering photography though. I've had the malabar prawn curry on my list for ages. Also one of the Goan curries, maybe a vindaloo?

But as I say, I never seem to get to it... I think the organization of the book somehow doesn't inspire me to put together a meal.

What are people's favorites?

[C. sapidus]

I agree with bague25, this is a wonderful book.

Particular favorites:

Lamb curry, madras style

Chicken and cashew nuts in black spices (kaju chicken in kaala masala)

Malabar shrimp curry (konju curry)

Fish in coconut milk (fish molee)

Also good:

Goa lamb vindaloo

Parsee red chicken curry

Madras fish curry

Particularly good side dishes:

Fragrant rice

Lemon rice

Stir-fried French beans (beans porial)

Peas and carrots with cumin (gajar mutter)

Many of the other side dishes - green chutneys, red chutney, cabbage koshumbir, okra with onions, cauliflower with shredded ginger – are easy to make and very good.

[Okanagancook]

Many thanks for all your comments. Bruce, I have made notes of your suggestions. For my dinner I am going to cook the following from 50 Great Curries:

page 170 Chana Dahl

page 165 Peas & Carrots with cumin (if my local store has frozen peas...I'm in the country)

page 164 Stuffed baby eggplants (managed to score some little beauties yesterday)

page 161 spinach with curd cheese (I made some paneer last week and it's in the freezer)

page 158 chapati

page 157 Lemon Rice...that one looks wonderful in the pictures with the lovely cashew nuts

page 179 Mango mousse for dessert (we got a Superstore in Penticton last month and they have a wonderful ethnic isle where I found pureed Alfonso Mango Pulp)

From my all time favourite Asian book, Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook (if you don't have this book, believe me, it's the bomb...I am already on my second book seeing the first one fell apart from about 15 years of use; this new one I've had since 1997) I'm making:

page 68 Eggs in Meatballs (basically an Indian scotch egg using lamb)

page 41 Prawns in Coconut Milk

From Time Life Foods of the World Indian Cookbook I've made the Murg Kari Chicken on page 53...it's in the freezer after having mellowed in the fridge for two day. This is one of my favourite chicken curries.

From Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking by Yamuna Devi (this book has wonderful soups, chutney and delicious vegetable dishes), page 345 Shredded Cucumber and mint Yogurt

Other Favourite Indian Cookbooks I use routinely are:

The books by Vij, Vancouver Chef

The Bengal Lancers Indian Cookbook by Mohan Chablani and Brahm N. Dixit. Doubt you'll be able to find it...it's out of print. Purchased in 1980 at a used bookstore.

I'll try and take pictures of the meal....if I can make it all and fit in on the table that is!

[rotuts]

people now days forget how terrific the Time-Life Food/cookbooks were at the time. i have the Indian Cookbook and still enjoy leafing through it.

[Okanagancook]

The dishes turned out very well. Everyone really liked the eggplant which is a very simple preparation. Make the spice mixture; cut a deep criss cross on the top of the mini eggplants; stuff in some of the spice mix then fry until cooked. They did take a lot longer than the 15 minutes stated in the recipe...about twice as long. No picture of finished dish.

The lemon rice was a new way of making rice for me. Cooking the rice first in some turmeric and salted water then turning out on to a tray to cool and dry. When ready to serve, fry the species, add the rice and heat. Very easy and it looked good. You can use lemon or lime juice and it had just enough citrus but not over powering.

The Spinach and Paneer dish was a gamble. It tasted great with the fresh spinach and garden tomatoes cooked and pureed BUT it looked like pond scum We have lots of it left. Will not make again. I like the traditional peas and paneer dish I usually make.

The peas and carrots has a nice ginger flavour and everyone liked this one a lot. Pretty easy to make but the carrots took too long to cook so I would cut them smaller next time or partially cook them before adding to the dish. The peas got over cooked.

The dahl was meh. Not a lot going on except for the chili heat. I would rather make the recipe from Vij which has more cumin, coriander and black mustard seeds.

.

The mango mousse was fantastic. Not too sweet nor too heavy after the curries. Easy to make: whip egg whites; whip cream; whip canned mango pulp; add gelatin and sugar; that's it.

The star of the meal was the pork vindaloo. Not from this book though. I sous vide the cubed pork shoulder at 149 degrees F for 48 hours after browning it first. I made the vindaloo sauce and simmered for two hours. Half and hour before serving the pork went into the hot sauce to mingle. The pork was juicy and tender. The flavour was there mainly because the vindaloo spicing is quite strong and it didn't matter that the pork was not cooked in it. I'll do this again.

[ericparkr]

Rice and Rajnmah Dal. It is my favourite food for Lucnh that i ate in India. It is north Indian Dish.

[Anna N]

Omelette curry from Malabar Coast p. 152

[pauleats]

Would like to use this book in near future, have heard about it much. Welcome to this book and you. So very glad having you here. Hope there are a lots of things in this forum that would make you like to read and I hope you will learn much from this forum within a short time. Okay, anyway, a short break to, a trip teamspeak 3 server coming back soon here running.

[Anna N]

I made the chicken dopiaza (p. 122). There is a photo over in the dinner topic. I did not use the 3 THREE teaspoons of chilli powder nor the 2 whole red chillies called for and thank goodness! With a scant teaspoon of chilli powder and a single red chillie there was more than enough heat for me.

[Okanagancook]

We made a feast last night. From this cookbook we made:

Page 74 Lamb Slow-cooked in onions and yoghurt. Really a nice deep rich flavour. Mild in the heat category. It is quite involved but worth the bother. We marinated the lamb in the yogurt coriander sauce over night.

Page 111 Goa Pork Vindaloo. Excellent heat if you like it on the spicy side which we do. Again we marinated the meat overnight. The recipe calls for 4 cups of water to be added before simmering. This is way too much in our minds. You might want to add enough to cover the meat by a little and then add more if you like. A very good vindaloo...we didn't have the kind of vinegar called for so we used rice vinegar.

Page 163 Cauliflower with Shredded Ginger. A very mild dish which paired well with the rest of the meal. Other recipes we made were spicy fried okra; saffron rice; Coconut dahl; cucumber raita; chapati and shrimp.

There were five of us eating and we figured it took 21 man-hours to make everything. On the night of the dinner our two friends came early and we all cooked for three hours before it was ready. Yikes, that's a lot of time in the kitchen but so worth it for such excellent curries.

Sorry no pictures. Our friends were just in Italy with other friends who insisted on photographing everything anyone was about to eat so we thought we should just eat it.

[Okanagancook]

Forgot to mention the new method I used to make the chapati dough. My brother lived in India for a year and he learned that to make chapatis that stay soft you use boiling water to make the dough. I used 2 parts all purpose flour 1 part atta flour. They were wonderfully soft and pillow-like.

[Okanagancook]

Made the meat with lentils on page 84.  The picture is what drew me in.  Quite an involved recipe but well worth the effort.  This is the classic method of cooking the spices in onions and tomato, simmering the ingredients and then adding whole spices before serving.

[Kerala]

I haven't read through this thread yet, but I have just bought the book. I'm looking forward to reading the comments and cooking from the recipes!

[KennethT]

1 hour ago, Kerala said:

I haven't read through this thread yet, but I have just bought the book. I'm looking forward to reading the comments and cooking from the recipes!

I'm excited to see what you think.

[Tempest63]

Camellia Panjabi’s 50 Great Curries of India is without doubt one of my favourite books and I have three versions of the book. All have something different in them but all of them have some errors or incomplete recipes within. The Chicken Stew, The Parsee Red Chicken Curry,The Lamb Korma Pilaf, The Rogan Josh and The Kofta Curry (if you have the really old issue)all come to mind as having errors in the recipes. As an example looking at the recipe for the Chicken stew in the original version you are advised to blend together onions and green chillies. After blending them they are never again called upon. I presume you blend them and then leave them on the side until you do the washing up and throw them away.

 

I wrote to the publishers in the U.K. when the first version was released to some fanfare to make them aware of some of the errors but never received a response and the errors were subsequently carried over to further revisions of the book. There was a comment in the original from Camellia thanking the proof readers which made me smirk.

 

Anyone with experience of cooking Indian food would be able to see through the anomalies and overcome them and prepare some really good dishes. The only other caution I would give is be careful of the amount of liquid given in the recipes as some seem to have more than is really required. Other than that enjoy some classic Indian food.

 

 

[Tempest63]

I made the Lamb Vindaloo from this book over the weekend, substituting goat for the lamb. Took a little longer simmering but the result was very good. 
 

[C. sapidus]

33 minutes ago, Tempest63 said:

I made the Lamb Vindaloo from this book over the weekend, substituting goat for the lamb. Took a little longer simmering but the result was very good. 
 

 

Yes I liked that recipe. My notes say ~1.5 hours simmering for boneless lamb shanks