I bought this book a while back. I've tried making 3 curries from it and every one has turned out rubbish. In comparison, i've made about 10 curries from this website and every one has turned out great. Has anyone else used this book? I read the reviews for it and most of them were good. I must be missing something or maybe my expectations have gone up since I found mamta's kitchen.

I think from my experiences with cookbooks is they are written by well established experts who have forgotten why they do this,that or the other and don't even think about mentioning important parts that they no longer think about.

The beauty of this site is the recipes are written in a plain straight forward way that every part of the recipe is thought about. I know when submitting recipes for Mamta to look at I will get them back with questions about this part of that ingredient to make sure its telling the reader everything they need to know.

So when you read a recipe on here you will find it will tell you to brown the onions on a low heat in the pan until golden brown, then add these spices and cook them in for a few minutes.. In a cook book it might just say brown the onions and add the spices.. The slight difference could lead you to having the heat up full, all but burning the onions then throwing the spice in and adding the next ingredients etc...

Recipe books always remind me of the scene from the film "short circuit" where the robot has taken on human personalities and is cooking from a recipe book. Making a meal he starts with pancakes and it says add flour, milk and then says "add eggs" so the robot just puts eggs in without breaking the shells. Then cooking something in a box it says cooking one side then turn over, which the robot does but hasn't taken it out of the box...

Its this sort of detail that is omitted in cook books. Someone who has been cooking for 30 years in a restaurat forgets you need to be told that you are doing this for this reason and this is the result you need to get etc...

Steve

the clip from the short circuit movie if it will let me post it !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaAKxTj6tx0

Steve

Surely the big difference with Mamta's recipes is that they are written with obvious care and love without some publisher's deadline looming. They are then tested to the limits by an army of amateur cooks (i.e. you and me!) and even the slightest misunderstanding is fed back through these forums and if necessary the recipe gets updated, usually that day.

With a commercial writer you pay your ?19.99 and you get a selection of recipes set in stone. Mamta's website continually evolves and you can question Mamta and her band of merry followers - no contest really is it!

Winton

Absolutely correct, as soon i found about this website i have stopped looking for recipes anywhere else.

I suppose something else that has to be taken in to account is the quality/type of produce being used.

If you are a Michelin star'd chef working in a restaurant serving meals at ?100 a time, the chances are you will be sourcing the best of the best available. It will be difficult for your dish not to taste good. However when us "joe public" go to the supermarket and buy our ingredients ours may not have the same taste.

From personal experience I know that I can go just about anywhere in Cyprus (little shop, supermarket, market store etc) and buy tomatoes that no matter how much I've tried back home in the UK (which includes organic, locally produced, vine ripened and even growing my own)that come near to the flavour !

Same goes for things like Cyprus potatoes in the UK, they are very nice (and very expensive) but not quite as good when they have travelled and aged coming over from Cyprus. In Cyprus they are another few notches better as they were picked late last night/early this morning from a field just up the road and used today..

This means you sometimes have to adjust recipes to suit your own ingredients. A tomato in Cyprus screams out tomato flavour but a mass produced supermarket salad tomato in the UK doesn't so you might have to add some tomato pur?e to boost the flavour etc.

I've also noticed spices can differ a lot too. If you buy a generice supermarket black pepper you might use 1 tsp in a dish, where the black pepper from our local Indian shop would blow your head off if you used that amount.

worth considering ?

Steve

Hello savs

Your questions have been answered by my regulars much better thah I could. I haven't seen the said book, so am unable to comment.

Thanks for replyig to savs question, you guys are going to turn my head ;-)! My computer was npot wokring this morning and this is the first chance I have had to look in.

I've cooked nearly every curry apart from vegetable and they have all turned out well, I use this book all the time. I've also cooked quite a few curries using this site and they have turned out fanstatic so this website wins every time!!

Thank you Em.

Mamta

I have known this book well, and bought many copies for myself and friends, which do alter from edition to edition. As a book on Indian cooking, I think it important, but maybe not the best. There are mistakes and omissions, and the one with the dvd has CP holding up Byadgi chillies and she tells us they are Kashmiri chillies. So good, but no cigar!

I would have issues with many of her recipes, but I like mine as near original as possible. This does mean different ingredients, which I can get locally. For example I always use Indian onions, even my brother can tell the difference. And I would never put potatoes (or colacassia) in a vindaloo, or tomatoes in a rogan josh.

I have one a copy of this book and find the recipes generally quite good. As far as my Indian recipe books go, it is my favourite behind Madhur Jaffrey. However, like most others it seems, I tend to get best results from Mamtas recipes and recipes submitted by others on this site.

With all recipes, I do tend to experiment with the quantities of ingredients that I like and also trow favourite flavours EG fennel seeds for a slightly aniseed hit or towards the end of cooking, methi for a great savoury enhancer. Throughout any recipe, I am constantly tasting for sweetness, sourness, saltiness, depth of flavour etc and add adapt as I see fit. I tend to think of recipes as a good starting base.

Hope this helps!

James

I also rate this book highly, but to get best results from it may require a reasonable level of proficiency and experience with cooking Indian food. I recall buying a copy for my brother, who only cooks occasionally and it left him feeling distinctly unimpressed.

Following on from James' comments about adding fennel or methi to recipes, I've recently rediscovered 'Panch Pooran': http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=10553

Well it never really went away as it features in a lot of Mamta's vegetable dishes (cauliflower/broccoli & panch poori is a marriage made in heaven!)

Recently I had a few dishes that weren't quite 'there' but a good sprinkling of panch poori did the trick. I presume this is not really the idea as it should be tempered first? Any way the curry suddenly seemed 'complete.'

Winton

You are absolutely right Winton. This is something that is impossible to write down in each recipe, but addition of methi or changing the Tarka ingredients, say to panch-pooran/panch-phoran or mustard seeds and curry leaves, changes the flavour of a dish completely. I try to give alternatices sometimes, but not always. Sometimes you cook something and, as you said, there is something missing. This can be due to variations in so many things, including the type of ingredient used. So, one has to taste and adjust accordingly. I can never understand people, especially us Indians, who take pride in saying that they never taste anything, implying that they are perfect cooks with no need to taste ;-)!

but if there is something missing, then either one has changed the recipe, forgotten an ingredient or applied a technique incorrectly.

I don't usually taste as I go along, the dish isn't finished, so how can I tell what it will end up like. But I do develop flavours rather than just add them. I only taste at the end, to check the seasoning.

I'm not the kind of person who takes a recipe as a starting point, but as a fait accompli. If I was developing a recipe, that would be different, but once completed, that would be it. Adding flavours ad hoc is dangerous, it can be a fine balancing act, even to the experienced.

Lapis, not necessarily...

It could simply that one of the ingredients has a slightly weaker, stronger or simply different taste to normal and therefore the balance of flavours is different even though methods and amounts used remain the same...

agreed, but that would not warrant adding flavours that aren't in the original recipe, would it? Most good recipes (not involving baking!) are rugged enough to accommodate minor variations. But I've seen all sorts of recipes (on other forums!) where people add anything, including the kitchen sink, well, maybe not. I think in those cases, people confuse 'adding more flavour' with 'has better flavour'.

Its interesting (for me) to strip away the modern additions to traditional recipes, and what is left is far less ingredients, yet far more flavour! Here, the flavours are developed, rather than added. Technique is more important than a list of ingredients in these recipes.

Thanks for your replies. Think i'm be sticking to this site for my future recipes. I was already quite a proficient cook before I came here but I must admit, i've learnt loads since I have. I think the recipes here do benefit from people posting in the forum if they think something is wrong or written wrong or not clear enough. Thanks for a great site. As for the book. The last recipe I cooked was the parsee red chicken curry. I followed the recipe perfectly. I used top quality ingredients. I buy my spices from an indian grocer. The picture in the book looked lovely and deep red. It turned out nothing like that and tasted so bland. I've found loads of mistakes in the book and I won't be using it again.

Lapis, yes absolutely.

I do get the drive to look for new flavour/ texture combinations... and create versions of dishes that are adjusted to one's personal tastes.

I like to do that too.

But I also like, at other times, to make a dish just as intended, just as it has been made for many long years and enjoy the experience.

I can't make any comment about Ms Panjabi's recipes, not being familiar with them. But this is about trying a new recipe and having a dismal failure. On Saturday I tried the Parsi recipe for fried chicken from the Cook in a Curry website (the first one from there that I have tried - I can't get the exact name of the recipe because I can't get onto the website at present) and it turned out really badly. First there didn't seem to be enough liquid to get the paste ingredients into a paste. I added just a little water to make it pasty enough to be able to coat the chicken with it. But perhaps this was a mistake because after marinading, dipping in beaten egg, frying and then finishing in the oven, the coating on the chicken was kind of soggy and disagreeable and came off the pieces as I put them in a serving dish.I wondered if this was because there was a layer of marinading paste (green chili, etc) under the egg?

The recipe didn't say to take the skin off the chicken pieces but I did as I think that is the usual thing with Indian food.

I know I should ask on that website where I went wrong, but I have the feeling that this is one of the very few food websites where it is OK to say that you mucked something up and ask for advice.

Was it Chicken Farcha or Lagan Na Chicken Farcha Heather?

The recipe I have from 'Parsee Kitchen, Chef's Special, boils the chicken in salted water until tender first. Then you cool and stab it with a fork. Then make a paste of garlic, cumin, red chillies in vinegar and coat chicken pieces, marinate in fridge for a few hours.

Beat eggs with 1 tsp. water (to 2 eggs) till frothy. Roll chicken in bread crumbs first*, then dip chicken in egg and deep fry STRAIGHT AWAY, in hot oil. What it say next is a bit complicated; spoon a little egg on frying piece of chicken with one hand and immediately spoon some hot oil onto the egg with your other hand. Add 3 more tsp. onto this chicken piece while it is cooking and cook until egg is brown and frilly. Chicken must not be turned over during cooking. I must admit that most recipes from this pocket cookery book series are not that great, so i can't say how it will turn out!

*Parsees do the same with their Kebabs, that is dip each kebab in crumbs first and then egg (opposite to the normal wisdom) and I will say that it works a treat; http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=12811. This recipe is from my Parsee friend and definitely works.

If it is the cookinacurry blog, then you should absolutely give feedback and ask for advice on the site - Maunika is a lovely, friendly, warm lady who I know online and am hoping to meet in person some day. She and I did a guest post for each others' blogs a couple of months ago.

I can't comment on the recipe itself as have no idea.

Kavey

x

Hi Mamta and Kavey,

Yes, it was Murghi na Farcha, which I think is the same as what you said, Mamta (murghi=chicken?). And yes, it was from the Cook in a Curry blog - I actually discovered this blog when Kavey exchanged recipes with Maunika. She seems lovely and HER murghi na farcha looks delicious. I guess I was just too embarrassed to contact her as I imagine I messed it up somehow, and it is a recipe from her family and clearly dear to her heart.

Perhaps one day I will try another recipe for it - though somewhat complicated the method you mention (boiling first, then frying) sounds like it might work better, as it was definitely the spell in the oven that did the damage to mine.

If Heather's paste would not paste, would it have been better to add a little (olive?) oil rather than water?

Yes it would definitely stick better with oil.

Heather, don't be embarassed to get in touch.

If someone contacts me about a recipe of mine on my blog because something went wrong and to ask for help, I would be happy to discuss with them. It could be that I made a typo or genuine transcription mistake, it could be that they wrote it down wrong, it could be that they misunderstood one of my instructions, whatever the reason, I would want to find out with them - all of us who share recipes online do so because we want to share the joy of cooking and eating...

:)

Kavey: "all of us who share recipes online do so because we want to share the joy of cooking and eating..."

....and that just sums why this site is great! Cheers!

Steve

Exactly Steve, and we can share both our successes and failures without fear of retribution or being shot down in flames!

I think I'll start with the Parsi kebab recipe (it looks manageable) and maybe graduate to chicken later. Should the meat be lamb?

Heather

I thought the Parsis had few dietary restrictions, but like in a dhansak lamb would seem traditional?

Winton