Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking

For those who are fans of indian cookery, this is the Book. It guirdes the reader step by step to the preparation of the most wonderfull and excellent indian food I've seen. Try it and you will see by yourself. It is a most for any cooking library.

I've been on an Indian cooking kick lately; which, incidentally, has me feeling pretty darn good. This book is so far above others I have bought that it really deserves all the good press it can get. Like the first reviewer, I was surprised to learn that Vedic cooking does not use garlic or onions, and I was a bit skeptical when first approaching these recipes. However, everything I have made, from the bread, chutneys and rice dishes, to the plethora of vegetable courses, has been really excellent and very flavorful. I did go on-line to [...]to purchase some of the harder-to-find spices, and pappadums (the super thin lentil wafers you can make in 30 seconds on a dry frying pan that are really fun and healthy), but almost everything was available locally at our co-op. As a seasoned cook, I usually just want to jump to the chase (the recipes) and avoid all the blather about what makes each recipe so special, but I found myself fascinated by the text at the beginning of each chapter, as well as before each recipe. If you need a present for someone who loves to cook, and wants to make authentic Indian vegetarian dishes at home, this is the apotheosis of what's out there.

`The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking' by Yamuna Devi can be placed among those great expositions in English of national cuisines such as Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking', Marcella Hazan's `Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking', Diane Kochilas' `The Glorious Food of Greece' or Mimi Sheraton's `The German Cookbook'. And, this book has an IACP Cookbook of the Year award to prove this fact. This book even exceeds the ambitions of the books by Kochilas and Sheraton in that while these authors do an excellent job of surveying the entire national cuisine from either a serving or geographical point of view, they do little to analyze their cuisines in the way Nancy Harmon Jenkins dissects and builds a picture of the Mediterranean cuisines in `The Essential Mediterranean'. Ms. Devi does this and more. In fact, as big as this book is, it does itself and its readers a service by covering only the Hindu vegetarian cuisines, without touching on the cuisines of India which allow eating meat, primarily lamb and goat. Even more specifically, the author is specifically dedicated to that part of the Hindu religion that embraces Krishna. I will not touch on that aspect of the book except to point out that this means there are areas of Indian and Pakistani cuisines that this book does not cover. For those, the first stop is obviously the books of Madhur Jaffrey who, in her `Indian Cooking' does cover many meat dishes with lamb and goat. Indian vegetarianism as presented by Ms. Devi in this book is relative broad in that it allows both milk and eggs. So, while `vegetarianism' allows much more than a diet of vegetables, grains, and beans, Ms. Devi treats vegetable cookery with a depth I have not seen in any book except James Peterson's book, `Vegetables'. Ms. Devi presents three basically different ways of cooking the same vegetable and suggests that these three methods may be applied to every different type of vegetable. The first method is Sauteeing and Braising Dry Vegetables (cooked entirely in oil. No water.) I believe this is what the French would call a vegetable comfit. The second method is to saute in oil followed by a braise in water based broth. This is closer to what a western cook would call a braise. The third method precooks the vegetable in water and finishes it with high heat in oil (ghee) or highly flavored sauce or broth. Pairing them up with a choice of several different seasoning mixes permutes these three methods. The author sets off with this introduction to discuss the various different types of vegetables and how the various methods can be applied to each vegetable. Most of this is not too different from what you can get from a close reading of Marcella Hazan's books. The Indian way with milk and yogurt is an entirely different matter. The Indian traditions with milk products seem to be about 180 degrees away from the European traditions involving aged cheeses. The only point of similarity between Indian yogurt and Weste

`The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking' by Yamuna Devi can be placed among those great expositions in English of national cuisines such as Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking', Marcella Hazan's `Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking', Diane Kochilas' `The Glorious Food of Greece' or Mimi Sheraton's `The German Cookbook'. And, this book has an IACP Cookbook of the Year award to prove this fact. This book even exceeds the ambitions of the books by Kochilas and Sheraton in that while these authors do an excellent job of surveying the entire national cuisine from either a serving or geographical point of view, they do little to analyze their cuisines in the way Nancy Harmon Jenkins dissects and builds a picture of the Mediterranean cuisines in `The Essential Mediterranean'. Ms. Devi does this and more. In fact, as big as this book is, it does itself and its readers a service by covering only the Hindu vegetarian cuisines, without touching on the cuisines of India which allow eating meat, primarily lamb and goat. Even more specifically, the author is specifically dedicated to that part of the Hindu religion that embraces Krishna. I will not touch on that aspect of the book except to point out that this means there are areas of Indian and Pakistani cuisines that this book does not cover. For those, the first stop is obviously the books of Madhur Jaffrey who, in her `Indian Cooking' does cover many meat dishes with lamb and goat. Indian vegetarianism as presented by Ms. Devi in this book is relative broad in that it allows a broad range of milk products. So, while `vegetarianism' allows much more than a diet of vegetables, grains, and beans, Ms. Devi treats vegetable cookery with a depth I have not seen in any book except James Peterson's book, `Vegetables'. Ms. Devi presents three basically different ways of cooking the same vegetable and suggests that these three methods may be applied to every different type of vegetable. The first method is Sauteeing and Braising Dry Vegetables (cooked entirely in oil. No water.) I believe this is what the French would call a vegetable comfit. The second method is to saute in oil followed by a braise in water based broth. This is closer to what a western cook would call a braise. The third method precooks the vegetable in water and finishes it with high heat in oil (ghee) or highly flavored sauce or broth. Pairing them up with a choice of several different seasoning mixes permutes these three methods. The author sets off with this introduction to discuss the various different types of vegetables and how the various methods can be applied to each vegetable. Most of this is not too different from what you can get from a close reading of Marcella Hazan's books. The Indian way with milk and yogurt is an entirely different matter. The Indian traditions with milk products seem to be about 180 degrees away from the European traditions involving aged cheeses. The only point of similarity between Indian yogu

My Mother gave me this book when it was first published, and I hung onto it for ten years before beginning. I'm so glad I did! Over the past five years, I have cooked an ever widening range of it's dishes, and I have years worth of cooking still to try. I knew nothing about Indian spice combinations or an indian kitchen before reading this book, and it has transformed the contents of my cupboards. Definitely a book to grow with. The only cookbook I use more is "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison, which actually references this one!Recipe Quality: Almost every single recipe produces a dish that my family and all my friends love. I find that for our taste, we can generally cut the oil by 30-50% and the dish is right for us. Also, we tend to add more salt, up to double. Also, for some reason (we think it's because we use heavy cast iron soup pots so little steam escapes), we almost always have to cut the amount of water in the dals by about 40% or so, to avoid completely watery dal. But the spicing and proportions are otherwise dead-on to produce mouthwatering favorites.I do agree that there's too much fawning over the author's mentor in the introductions to the recipes. However, many of the intros give little vignettes about being in households in different parts of India, and these I found fascinating. I only wish this part of the book had been expanded upon a little, so I could come away with a clearer idea of the differences in regional cooking.Overall, a terrific introduction to Indian cooking and one that can keep teaching you new tricks for years.