Madhur Jaffrey's World-Of-The-East Vegetarian Cooking

There hasn't been one recipe from this book that I haven't loved. I found in my public library and started copying the first few recipes onto cards. After my third time of checking this book out, I realized that I would be copying the whole book if I continued. My personal favorites are the Very Spicy Chickpeas, Her recipe for Paranthas, tofu and Broccoli. All I can say is don't be intimidated by the spice lists. It makes the ingrediants and recipe look twice as long and complicated as it really is. I also love the artwork! It is beautiful and elegant to me.

I first flipped through this book when I was a teenager almost 18 years ago. I have to admit I was a little put off my the ingredients and techniques that were all so new to me. Years later I gave it another look through. Being a vegetarian at the time, I was missing Chinese food and wanted to try making some of my own. I bought this book and that was it for me. Every weekend I found myself exploring Chinatown, Little India, Japanese, Korean and Thai grocery stores. Afterwards I'd run home and whip up some outstanding meals.Since then, I've collected most of Madhur Jaffrey's books and my kitchen has truly transformed. I fell in love with Asian food, so much so that I packed up my cases and headed over here to Asia. This is truly an inspirational and indispensable book. Her Chinese dishes are among the best and her Indian ones are far better than any dishes I've ever had at any Indian restaurant. The tomato chutney is out of this world!This book is a great launching pad if you're a vegetarian and want to learn how to cook. It's a great alternative to the gaseous bean-filled or heavy-handed cheese recipes in other Western veggie cookbooks. It's also a fantastic cookbook if you want to venture into Asian cooking. Give it a go!

I've owned this cookbook for more than a decade and the diversity of curious and interesting recipies never fails to captivate and inspire me. While her later cookbooks have beautiful color photographs, I can browse time after time to increase my understanding of how cuisine can be configured. I've cooked Thanksgiving dinner from this cookbook and regularly enjoyed one of my favorite breakfast meals - Blackeye Pea Pancakes rolled with chutney. Aging the mash overnight with the requisite jalapeno pepper in the mix allowed for a tangy, slightly fermented quality to the batter - just think about the collision with chutney in the middle! I generally don't cook by recipes, so this cookbook has allowed my sense of food to expand and be nurtured by creatively inspired, simple knowledge. Madhur Jaffrey's work will never let you down and this information source has long been a foundation stone of my understanding of how interesting food can be.

When I lived in a household with cooking shared among 7 adults, and over 5 linear feet of cookbooks, over half our meals came from this book. She's accessible and reliable: the worse recipe we tried was merely "good", and most were very good to excellent! Most recipes are easy, although some are only for the ambitious. My only complaint: it's a paperback, so the binding will fall apart from the heavy use you're likely to give this cookbook.