Many years ago, my best friend did the greatest thing for my birthday.  She bought me an Indian cookbook and made bags up of all the spices I would need to start cooking and labeled them.  It was one of the nicest and most thought about gifts I have ever gotten.

The name of the book she got was "Indian Cooking" by Madhur Jeffrey's. It's pretty basic with all the traditional indian recipes.  It also talks about the equipment you will need and what spices you need to have in your pantry.

Try it out! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks, Vicki, I'll look for that book.  Your friend's gift idea was great. 

Terri

 

PS The title for this topic was supposed to read Indian Cooking.  I don't know what happened to the rest of the letters. LOL

 

No one thought up being;

He who thinks he has

Step forward.  - Jim Morrison

Now that I've pulled it out for you, I think I'll have to make a recipe or two.

I was also going to suggest Indian cooking by Jeffrey as well, but I see Vicki already did so. :)

 

It is a great book, it's one of the top books for Indian cooking, I believe.

One of my roommates has a vegeterian one, we've tried out several recipes already, they're lovely. Maybe it'd be in your interest in case you want to try some vegeterian cuisine.

 

The book is by Julie Sahni.

 

Good luck, perhaps you should keep us posted! :) See how everything goes.

Remember that to really get great indian food, you must prepare the spices yourself and make sure they are fresh.  I used to work with and Indian woman who made everything from scratch each night and that was her suggestion to me.

I love chicken tika masala, but I recently found out how many calories it had.  A lot!!!! I did not know that Indian food was high in calories.  It always seems healthy, but watch out.

Try the website http://www.sanjeevkapoor.com/. Click on the Recipes button on top left and try the complementary recipes. The best part of these recipes are minimum ingredients, easy to prepare and great tasting results. Explore the webiste for more...

Wonderful site.  Very helpful when it comes to healthy indian.  Are you a memeber and do you feel it is worth joining?

When preparing Indian food or ordering it out, try and go to a place that prepares southern indian cooking.  It tends to be lower in calories and made from more lentils and beans and red sauces instead of cream and coconut milk.  Also roti is made from whole wheat instead of naan that is made fro white flour.  Hope this helps.

Here's the one Indian Cooking book I have on my shelf...it's not bad, decent introduction and a good amount of recipes to get started with.

Buy it here 

I just read the book "the namesake" by jhumpa lahiri and it is about an Indian family from Calcutta and their assimilation here in america.  WHile reading it, it had so many of the familiar dishes we know and I found myslef getting hungry.  Isn't it amazing what food can do for us.  By the way, the book is AMAZING-a must read for the summer!