Show us your latest cookbook acquisitions!

[Tan Can Cook]

On 8/2/2024 at 10:07 AM, Tempest63 said:

I have OCD over books, especially anything Indian, or similar.
I have a passion for food from the Indian continent and prefer traditional food as opposed to the slop served up in the U.K. high street Indian restaurants.

This arrived yesterday from Penguin India, although I ordered it several weeks ago from Amazon.uk.

I was working from home today and have had only had a quick flick through but it is already inspiring me. On first inspection it seems a cut above my other Nepalese cookbooks.

 

 

I am a huge fan of South Asian (Desi) regional cuisine spanning present day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Iran. It's great to run into another foodie who is into regional Desi Khana. Namaskar from across the pond in California (USA).

[Tan Can Cook]

On 12/9/2024 at 10:45 AM, Tempest63 said:

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.

 

When it comes to regional Indian cuisine, my focus is Mughlai and Deccani cuisines and my studies and interests follows the Mughal culinary path and its adjacents. I have experiences cooking Awadhi/Rampuri and Hyderabadi foods. Because I also know Persian cuisine, I see immense Persian influences on Mughlai foods.

[Tan Can Cook]

Here are my recent purchases. Please ignore the specular highlights as they are from the Brodart archival mylar that I covered of Alwan-E-Nemat: A Journey Through Jahangir's Kitchen (October 2024) and Demco adhesive for the paperback book on Pahadi cuisine from Uttarakhand state in India called Uttarakhand Cuisine: Food and Folktales from the Hills! I got lucky and found a reputable independent bookseller on Biblio importing authentic books (priced fairly and competitively) from India.

 

I've already read through the Alwan-e-Nemat book, since it is right up my alley of being immensely fascinated by Mughlai and Nizami cuisines of India.

 

Brief trivia. Most of everyone know about the famous "Taj Mahal" of India. It was built by Shah Jahan. He was the 5th Mughal emperor. His father Emperor Jahangir is the 4th Mughal emperor and the book is a culinary time travel into 17th century "Mughal Hindustan" his kitchens based on Persian manuscripts.

 

Google Books has some previews of the introduction sections, which might be interesting to some history and cultural perspectives. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Alwan_E_Nemat/zzgxEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0.

 

The author—Shrimati Salma Husain ji—wrote The Mughal Feast: Recipes from the Kitchen of Emperor Shah Jahan (A Transcreation of Nuskha-e-Shahjahani) in 2021.

 

Based on how I positioned the books, they are at the extreme polar opposites in terms of ingredients, taste, and flavor profiles.

 

You have the time travel back to Mughal-era India, when India was on its apex of wealth and affluence. Next to it, the cuisines from the Pahahi people of Uttarakhand, who live along the Himalayan Hills in not to friendly environments to grow food and ingredients.

[Smithy]

I picked up this little booklet at the library book giveaway in Duluth, MN just before leaving town. 

 

 

I've never been to Rice Creek Recreation, but found the little book appealing for its focus on wild game and its family orientation.

 

 

It has amusing little sketches..

 

 

..and a few recipes I might actually try some day, adapting them if necessary to a different form of game.

 

 

Truth to tell, I thought of @Shelby when I saw it! 

 

 

[Tan Can Cook]

The 5th edition (40th anniversary) version of Food of Life arrived today. I gifted my previous 4th edition to my local library. I don't like it when hardcover books, especially large ones, don't have a dust jacket. This was one of the changes made by Persian cuisine doyenne Najmieh Batmanglij.

 

As with all my books, I cover them in Brodart archival mylar, and all my books are in pristine and immaculate condition. When I cook, I digitize the recipe(s) and store that in the "Originals" folder in my Google Drive. From this original copy, I perform modifications and adaptations, e.g. scaling recipes or adding extra spices and herbs as I see fit.

 

Several of the recipe ingredients are slightly tweaked. For example in 4th version, ground saffron is dissolved ("bloomed") in rose water. In this new version, ground saffron is used directly in the mixture, such as when making Kabab-e Koobideh. Instead of adding sumac (4th version), now, add some strained yogurt (or labneh) into the meat paste.

 

For books without dust jackets, I make mylar dust jackets for them—kind of like how we had to cover our textbooks during school, all the way through high school. I remember it was mandatory.

[weinoo]

4 hours ago, Tan Can Cook said:

Several of the recipe ingredients are slightly tweaked. For example in 4th version, ground saffron is dissolved ("bloomed") in rose water.

 

You wouldn't actually use ground saffron, would you. Isn't it widely considered to be an inferior product? Or, put another way, isn't it widely considered to be easily "doctored" to actually not be saffron?

 

I can't imagine someone going through the exercise of covering books in mylar to be the same person to use ground saffron.

[Tan Can Cook]

17 minutes ago, weinoo said:

 

You wouldn't actually use ground saffron, would you. Isn't it widely considered to be an inferior product? Or, put another way, isn't it widely considered to be easily "doctored" to actually not be saffron?

 

I can't imagine someone going through the exercise of covering books in mylar to be the same person to use ground saffron.

 

I use Saharkhiz branded zafaran from Mashhad, Iran. They are not pre-ground. I was informed it was superior Sargol grade, complete absence of any yellow. I paid a little over 100 USD for 25 grams.

 

The "ground saffron" was referring to the changes in the book edition. The 4th edition (which I gifted to my local library) calls for blooming the saffron in rose water.

 

The changes in the 5th edition in the same recipe just calls for "ground saffron."

 

If I was cooking that recipe using 5th edition changes, I would take some of my whole saffron and ground them using a dedicated mortar and pestle and directly include them into the meat paste.

[weinoo]

54 minutes ago, Tan Can Cook said:

 

If I was cooking that recipe using 5th edition changes, I would take some of my whole saffron and ground them using a dedicated mortar and pestle and directly include them into the meat paste.

i wouldn’t have it any other way!

Edited Saturday at 01:05 AM by weinoo (log)