by Monica Bhide
As I expected, a cookbook with extras. What I didn't expect was the volume of the extras, both the big, 2-3 page stories and the occasional little mini-stories in with the recipes. Very enjoyable.
Both the little stories and the big ones are chatty, informal tales of cooking, traveling, meeting people and more. You practically get to know her just by reading her recipe notes. By cooking the recipes you'd be stepping even further into Ms. Bhide's crossover life. She explains at the beginning that this is her own, highly personal introduction to Indian food and flavors--it's not a reference manual. It's an attempt to capture the soul of the cuisine and not be too fussy about authenticity. And borrowing on her own claims to authenticity, she allows herself to improvise.
I enjoyed the book but didn't copy down more than two of the recipes. As much as I love the cuisine and will continue to cook my own Americanized versions of dals, curries, and 'masalas', I simply will not begin every recipe with "2 tablespoons vegetable oil". That's just a little too Americanized for me. In my stubborn know-it-all opinion, a teaspoon of olive oil or ghee rubbed around the skillet will improve most dishes, but I'm not going to have everything swimming in 'vegetable oil'. Yuck.
So I won't attempt to review the recipes but I will recommend the book--it's a lot of fun.
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