1 hour ago, liuzhou said:So, I tried some of the more promising recipes, meticulously following the instructions.The results were awful. Over watery, bland and barely edible. I checked the recipes over and over to see if I had overlooked anything, but it seemed not.
A couple of years later, I went to India for just over a year. There, I found that a lot of the food I was served in small restaurants was just like those awful recipes. I have to say the worst Indian food I have ever eaten was in India!
This made me chuckle. My only Indian cookbook is Vij's Indian Cuisine. As beloved and well-used as it is (I even have it signed), the recipes all call for cups and cups of water to be added, an instruction which I have always been perplexed by and omitted to great effect
QuoteI'll also add that last one is a Phaidon book and I've found many of their cookbooks to be beautiful to look at but poorly edited from a cook's perspective.
I have been looking for someone to say this for ages. Thought it was just me but I got so upset by their recipes that I gave away all my Phaidon books (although looking at what Noma sells for nowadays I deeply regret that one....)
