A Recipe on How Not to Write a Cookbook

books:


	• My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking Niloufer Ichaporia King University of California Press, 2007 - 355 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wonderful cookbook (and more)

A wonderful cookbook that I've read cover to cover. My husband is Indian, I own a dozen Indian cookbooks and this is easily my favorite (and he and I love the results). In addition to My Bombay Kitchen's delicious recipes, fascinating history of Parsis, and friendly, accessible tone, I love that this cookbook dispenses with glossy photos and obsessively detailed instructions and instead teaches the reader to cook by using the seven senses (smell, sight, hearing, touch, taste, sixth, and common). The author is not just teaching me how to cook Parsi food, but how to use seasonal, fresh produce and techniques that will improve the taste and presentation of any dish.

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Read in bed, dream of mangoes

Some people use cookbooks, I read them. I believe a cookbook, especially an ethnic or exotic one, should be as entertaining as a novel, as detailed as a travel guide, and as warm and witty as a good neighbor's kitchen. It's rare to find a cookbook that fits the bill as completely--and cleverly--as this one. No tiresome list of esoteric ingredients and daunting prep, Niloufer's explanations of products, procedures and substitutions are clear and organized enough for newcomers to Middle- and Far-East cooking to march confidently, yet salted with options for more advanced cooks to flex their jazz and improv muscles. The obsessive attention to detail and organization presciently addresses issues like storage and substitution, often with memorable mirth. (In a description of a recipe that can be successfully "thawed": "Note, I didn't say 'frozen.' Anything can be successfully frozen.") Moreover, she provides a brief and eloquent history of the Parsi people, giving the reader a solid foundation to better appreciate this somewhat obscure culinary creole.

Of course, the deal breaker is, "How's the food?" Well, her Major Ordle's Chutney is the best mango chutney I've ever made (and she explains why), her Mother's Wobbly Cauliflower Custard slides into a pie shell to become God's own quiche, and her masur (without tongue, thank you) is itself worth the price of admission.

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Parsi delicacies

Anyone who loves parsi must get this book. I enjoyed preparing and serving the dishes to my friends. I also recommend Finger Licking Different!!!

A Recipe on How Not to Write a Cookbook

I never can quite believe cookbook editors and designers who put these tomes together making them difficult to use as, yes, a cookbook. The recipes are densely packed into a design that practically shouts out: "Don't Bother." Additionally, except for the use of a garlic/ginger paste in nearly all dishes there is really very little in these recipes to make them stand out or be unique from countless other Indian cookbooks. including the very good and useable "Indian Home Cooking" by Suvir Saran. I think the author is a bit full of herself.

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Bombay Kitchen

Great book, I have tried a number of recipes and all have worked out very well

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

The Persians of antiquity were renowned for their lavish cuisine and their never-ceasing fascination with the exotic. These traits still find expression in the cooking of India's rapidly dwindling Parsi population--descendants of Zoroastrians who fled Persia after the Sassanian empire fell to the invading Arabs. The first book published in the United States on Parsi food written by a Parsi, this beautiful volume includes 165 recipes and makes one of India's most remarkable regional cuisines accessible to Westerners. In an intimate narrative rich with personal experience, the author leads readers into a world of new ideas, tastes, ingredients, and techniques, with a range of easy and seductive menus that will reassure neophytes and challenge explorers.

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