Easy Indian cook books

[oblio]

I'm not sure whether this should be in Food or Books so Mods please feel free to move if required

Now we are retired one thing we want to start doing is some Indian cooking. We both really like Indian food but the nearest resto would be around 20 miles from where we live, so we decided we would start to do some cooking for ourselves.

We are not numpties in the kitchen but by the same token don't want to spend 4 hours rustling up some basic dishes therefore we are after any recommendations for good Indian cookbooks for beginners to this cuisine.


Thanks

[thebraketester]

madhur jaffrey curry nation

Lots of fantastic recipes in there and non are overly complicated. The onion bhajis are superb

[J8 SVG]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CHAI-CHAAT-CHUTNEY-Journe...

Really like Chetna off of Bake off's books

[Shaw Tarse]

Do you have any local colleges that do Indian cooking classes?

[RizzoTheRat]

Anjum Anand's "Indian food made easy" has got some pretty good stuff in it.

As said above see if there's any local courses. I did one some years back through the local Tech college, think it was an evening a week for 6 weeks. They provided the hardware and spices, and you brought along your own onions/tomatoes/meat.

[SpeckledJim]

thebraketester said:

madhur jaffrey curry nation

Lots of fantastic recipes in there and non are overly complicated. The onion bhajis are superb

Madhur Jaffrey Curry Easy.

I didn't think it particularly 'easy' as most of the recipes seem to have 3 dozen ingredients, but the food is great.

[RizzoTheRat]

SpeckledJim said:

I didn't think it particularly 'easy' as most of the recipes seem to have 3 dozen ingredients, but the food is great.

But with Indian food a lot of those ingredients tend to be dried or spices that become store cupboard items once you've made a few of the recipies. It's well worth finding a decent Indian corner shop when you can buy a 500g bag of most spices for less than the supermarkets sell a tiny sachet or Schwartz pot.

[SpeckledJim]

RizzoTheRat said:

SpeckledJim said:

I didn't think it particularly 'easy' as most of the recipes seem to have 3 dozen ingredients, but the food is great.

But with Indian food a lot of those ingredients tend to be dried or spices that become store cupboard items once you've made a few of the recipies. It's well worth finding a decent Indian corner shop when you can buy a 500g bag of most spices for less than the supermarkets sell a tiny sachet or Schwartz pot.

Agreed, everything's available in our Indian supermarket pretty cheaply so it's not a major problem.

I've a cardboard box full of 500g bags of random dry Indian stuff, all with 50g missing, and mainly 2-3 years out of date, but we soldier on!

[Jambo85]

Unfortunately Indian cooking is fundamentally quite time consuming. Each to their own but I find preparing a range of curries to be a great use of a rainy Sunday!

I have heard good things about The Curry Guy's books in that he preps a base "gravy" in bulk from which most (all?) the curries are then constructed. Probably this saves a bit of time, and I think the style is more British Indian rather than Indian Indian.

Rick Stein's India is amazing - as well as covering the food from Rajasthan where most of the Indian food we see in the UK is from, there are also recipes from Bengal and Kerala which are completely different, and delicious. Most of the recipes are quite time consuming though.

[SpeckledJim]

This might be disparaged as too light-weight, but the Hairy Bikers Great Curries was good, too. I thought.

[zygalski]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/08628380...

Great book.
I regularly use a dozen or so main course recipes.
Very easy to cook & really good flavours.

[oblio]

Thanks all

I'll do some research.

Unfortunately there is no college near us at all where I could attend night classes.

[thebraketester]

Here’s one to try

[craig1912]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002S0KC1M/ref=dp-kind...

Spend a bit of time prepping the base which you can freeze then the rest is easy.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07C55TD8F/ref=dp-kind...

You can get some of the recipes from his website or twitter http://www.greatcurryrecipes.net

been cooking curries for 30 years and started with Pat Chapmans books

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Curry-Bible-Favourite-Rec...

[prand]

SpeckledJim said:

This might be disparaged as too light-weight, but the Hairy Bikers Great Curries was good, too. I thought.

I agree - I've made their jhalfrezi a few times and if you omit all the chillies its a good general purpose curry base.

I think my favourite way of cooking an Indian dish is to gently cook a couple of onions, a thumbs worth of ginger, and a 2-4 cloves of garlic in oil in a big pan until its a lovely light brown, soft mush. This I think is pretty much the base that the Curry Secret talks about (although that recipe calls for much larger quantities and blending with water once the ingredients have cooked right down)

From this base, depending on what I want to make, I add a standard set of spices (whole or ground: cumin, coriander, turmeric, fenugreek, cinnamon, nutmeg, - essentially the ingredients for Garam Masala), I'll also add cardamom, mustard seeds and black nigella seeds, canned tomatoes if required, further water if necessary, then salt, pepper, chillies for seasoning, then the veg or meat, and then fresh herbs like coriander and curry leaves at the end. Stir in yoghurt or cream at this point to make it more creamy. Ground almonds and some sugar and less of the dark spices to make more of a korma style. Half a lime to make it more tangy. And so on.

[carinatauk]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned the following website, I am sure I got it off here years ago

https://thecurrybible.wordpress.com/category/curry...

The Hairy Bikers Curry book was good as well

And if you want to make it easier, you can buy pre-mixed spices from somewhere like http://www.curryfrenzy.com/

[rlg43p]

Jambo85 said:

I have heard good things about The Curry Guy's books in that he preps a base "gravy" in bulk from which most (all?) the curries are then constructed. Probably this saves a bit of time, and I think the style is more British Indian rather than Indian Indian.

I bought this book and found the base curry powder ingredient hugely complex to make and quite unremarkable in flavour.

We have had much better results using the cookbook from The Spicery (https://www.thespicery.com/how-to-be-a-curry-legend-cookbook). My son made their chicken Korma and it was without question the best Korma I have ever eaten.

However they sell prepared spice blends in a tin and their recipes use these blends. This is a sneaky way of forcing you to buy their blends, at expensive prices, to get the results in their book.

They also do complete meal kits with all the side dishes, whilst they are exceptionally tasty they are complex and expensive.

They also do simple packs for one meal (like a Chicken Tagine). These are simple to cook, very tasty, but again not cheap.

I do buy their products because the meals they produce are excellent, but I take note of the ingredients in their spice mixes (the ingredients in the spice mixes are all listed but the relative quantities are not) and try to recreate them based upon my experience.

A great source of all the spices you need are Foxes Spices in Stratford on Avon. They sell spices by old style mail order (fax or phone) so you will have to ring them for a catalog. The people their are too old and crusty to be bothered with the internet. It is worth the effort though because their products are good value and superb and you can get ANYTHING from them!

Edited by rlg43p on Friday 21st September 17:55

[craig1912]

http://www.curryfrenzy.com

Good place for spices etc. Also do premixed spices which work really well and come with instructions.

[HTP99]

SpeckledJim said:

This might be disparaged as too light-weight, but the Hairy Bikers Great Curries was good, too. I thought.

I have that book and pretty much all of my Curries are from it, the indonesian beef curry is fantastic.

[spikeyhead]

The Hairy Bikers curry book is an excellent starting point, as is "cooking with my Indian Mother in law"