4 hours ago, Dr. Teeth said:Sorry to be a pest. You have mentioned a large collection of Indian cookbooks. If you were willing to share maybe your 3-5 favorites along with a general level of familiarity with Indian cooking needed, I would be in your debt.
That is quite a three pipe problem and will take some consideration.
The first two books would be the Madhur Jaffrey one from her 1970’s BBC programme, the second would likely be Camellia Panjabi’s 50 curries. That is based on the fact that they are the ones I revisit most. The MJ recipes are simple, but a bit more experience is needed with Camellias books as a number of the recipes are incomplete and don’t use all the ingredients listed.
In the 40 years or so that I have been cooking Indian food, books have come into favour then fallen out again. The Urban Rajah is one of my current favourites, the recipes are home style dishes, similar to a book I used a lot in the past titled Cooking with my Indian Mother In Law. Julie Sahni’s book on Indian food was first published in the 80’s I believe. and was heavily referenced back in the day and remains a classic. Nowadays anything by Vivek Singh or Anjum Anand whose recipes are easily accessible score high.
As for familiarity, I have been cooking traditional, home style Indian food for over 40 years.I know my Achari from my Biriani, and whilst we host a lot of Indian dinner parties (to use an out of favour phrase), we never get an invite to our friends for similar food. People tell us they couldn’t match what is prepared at our house.
I’ve picked up a few tips over the years, the most important being to “Cook with your nose”. Smell the garlic, smell the ginger and the masala as they cook, and don’t move on to the next phase until the raw smell has been cooked out. Always have a small jug of water to hand to cool down the pan and stop anything from burning, especially the spices. Take your time browning onions, 20 to 30 minutes. Halve the salt content given in a recipe book and adjust at the end. It’s easy to add salt but difficult to take it away.
Saying that India has many many regions and many types of influences. Historically I have focused on North Indian food, Kashmiri, Punjabi and Parsi food, so I am pretty blinkered to the food of the whole sub-continent.
I hope that goes someway to answering your question.
