From EYB re #AsmaKhan's new book, #flavour
[My comments are in square brackets.] It sounds interesting, especially as I have #MasalaLab by #KrishAshok on my desk at the moment.

Asma Khan, creator of Darjeeling Express in London, thinks that the idea of what Indian people eat at home is so wrong. “No one in India eats naan at home,” she says. “You need a tandoor. Your bloody house would catch fire. People’s idea of what we eat is so warped.”

Her two #cookbooks focus on Indian home cooking. Her upcoming book, Flavour – Discover the Elements Behind Delicious Indian Cookery, is different.

It is structured around the six core #ayurvedic tastes: Tangy, Bitter, Hot, Sweet, Sour, and Salty and how they correlate to the six seasons in Bengal. [These aren't actually the 6 Ayurveda tastes, which are Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, Pungent, Astringent.]

This book aims to illuminate Indian cookery by giving the foundations needed to build balanced flavours, dishes and sumptuous feasts. [All from a Bengali perspective, of course. Each region in Indian has very different food and approaches.]

With core techniques including roasting, grinding and tempering spices, how to cook with ghee, chillies, and onions, and what to add and when to re-balance flavours in a dish, Flavour will have home cooks applying fundamental processes intuitively to their cooking of Indian [Bengali] food.

#IndianFood #BengaliFood #Food #Cookbooks

I like this recipe - a dal paste filling for cabbage rolls that are steamed, then sliced, then fried. This method of steaming then frying is very common in #IndianFood (particularly snacks), and also very delicious.

bawarchi.com/recipe/cabbage-pa…

#SabitaRadhakrishna in her book #Annapurni, has a similar recipe, but she makes a ground lentil mixture (chana dal, toor dal and urad dal), and mixes in cabbage, onions, chillies and coriander, After steaming, it is cut into squares and fried for snacks, or the unfried squares can be used in any vegetable curry.

#food #Vegetarian

I've been browsing #MeenakshiAmmal's first book again tonight. It is an extended tutorial on Tamil food. You surely learn how to make sambar when you cook 10 different ones in a row, then kuzhambus, then Moar kuzhambus, then ..... and so it goes. I spent time cooking a couple of hundred recipes from this book and am not yet finished. I must get back to it.

Here you go: Pulse Balls Moar Kuzhambu. The balls are made with soaked and ground toor dal and spices, made into balls and steamed. Then simmered in the buttermilk spice stew.

#food #indianFood #vegetarian #EggFree

What's for (late) breakfast you ask? These Cheela - Savoury Indian Pancakes. These are made with coarse semolina (cheela can be made with a variety of lentil/grain flours). Plus onion, chilli, ginger, and spices mixed into the batter.

From #SpiceAtHome by #VivekSingh. Pic from the same book.

#IndianFood #Cheela #WhatIAmCooking #FromTheKitchen #Vegetarian #EggFree #WhatIAmEating