Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I always check the cookery book sections! Cooking follows fashions, to a certain extent, and you can quite often find very good cookery books by people who were famous a decade ago but have dropped out of the limelight. Foods That Harm, Foods That Heal is one we get so many of, they just go straight into the recycling. Likewise, anything by Gillian Mckeith. In a few years' time, the shelves will be full of Nigella and Jamie's recipes.

So I got it today from the library. It does seem quite overwhelming, so many recipes! I'll remember your suggestions and tell you what I think.

i LOVE the way this book is organized, really easy to use....still overwhelming though with sooo many recipes!

I got this book for Christmas from my dad and I never heard of it, but he said that the ladies at the book store said it was a wonderful book. I looked through it and it seems a lot of the recipes are the same recipe just swapping the ingredients around. I guess I should probably tackle this book soon and make something from it.

Yeah, let's see... Many of the dal recipes (legumes in general) come down to "Cook lentils or split peas or pigeon peas or something and then put something else on them." They use a "tarka," which is spices and garlic and maybe a pepper or two cooked in hot oil, which you then stir into the legumes. They're super-easy and generally quite tasty. That might be a good place to start-- look for any recipes that start out with something like "Cook 1 cup of chana dal as directed on page XXX" and just list a bunch of spices as the other ingredients.

This plus the basic flatbreads will get you a fantastic and easy dinner.

There's a recipe that's something like "cashews in spice paste" that's really good, but it's very strange to just sit down and eat a while pile of cashews. The paste is pretty easy-- just cilantro, coconut, and a pepper blended up, and there's some tamarind involved. We've made it with soy curls and tofu instead of cashews, and it's really fantastic.

I absolutely love this book. Some recipes that I really like are: the lentil and red bean chili, morrocan lentils (can't remember the exact name), tofu spread, baked greek white beans, morrocan black eyed peas, african peanut red beans. Some others that I can't remember. Great book. I often reduce the amount of oil and salt in the recipes but they still come out great.

I had this cookbook on the shelf and ignored it. Thanks to coldandsleepy's comments I tried a dal recipe. I made the Red Lentils Hyderabadi. YUMMMMMM! I didn't have curry leaves so I used 8 large fresh basil leaves and 1 bay leaf. It was just outstanding and I wish I had doubled the recipe. Kids loved it--can't wait to cook it up for my husband.

The chickpea flour pizza (that you start on the stove & finish in the oven) is gorgeous.

I made the Fettucini with Ricotta, Spinach, & Pine Nuts tonight, using the V'con tofu ricotta. Reeeally tasty.

I did cut the oil by about half. It seems like I do that with almost all of Madhur Jaffrey's recipes. I also used half the pasta she called for and the entire batch of tofu ricotta (the recipe calls for 3/4 cup ricotta & 3/4 cup parmesan). I don't understand how it would even work with a full pound of pasta - the pasta to sauce ratio seemed about perfect the way I did it.

This is one of my favorite books! I think my favorite recipes is the Chickpea, Pumpkin and Raisin stew. Actually, this stew is maybe my favorite food if you leave aside enormous salads featuring altogether ridiculous quantities of avocado and citrus.