Fearless Kitchen

Book Review: Best-Ever Curry Cookbook

Baljekar, Mridula.  Best-Ever Curry Cookbook: Over 150 Great Curries from India and Asia.  Anness Publishing, London 2001

I love curry.  It really is one of my favorite types of food to make.  I love it especially on weeknights in the winter, when what I mostly want is something that cooks up quickly and warms me up a bit.  Curry, of course, covers a multitude of dishes.  Very often we think of India when we think of curry, but the cuisine of much of South-East Asia offers a number of dishes that also fit the bill.  Part of what makes this particular book so great is that it explores the curries of multiple areas and provides relatively easy directions for preparing them. 

This is another book from the Hermes House imprint of Anness Publishing, and as such it follows a pretty standard format.  The pantry and equipment sections are helpful and the sections on culture are informative.  What makes this book different from most of the other publications in this series is that there are two distinct parts: one for Indian curries and one for South-East Asian curries.  Each part, in turn, provides a sampling of recipes from different regions in its particular geography.   India is divided along the lines of the compass, and South-East Asia is split into Thailand, Burma and Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and The Philippines.  Both halves contain a section on things to serve alongside curries, such as rice, bread and noodles.  Measurements are given as usual in both US and metric units.  Each small section offers a variety of types of dish, including vegetarian, poultry, meat and fish. 

I could certainly wish that this book were more exhaustive, and I'm not in a position to determine the authenticity of any of the dishes.  That said, I have made a number of dishes from this book and I found it very easy to use.  The recipes came out well and were enjoyed by all who ate them.  I can confidently recommend this book to anyone with an interest in learning a bit more about curry or to a novice cook looking to expand her weeknight repertoire. 

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Book Review: Asian Grill

Trang, Corinne.  Asian Grill.  Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2006

 

Anyone who has read this blog more than once is very well aware of the love of grilled food in my house.  My husband is particularly enamored.  He is also able to withstand temperatures far below my comfort zone, so if we can physically get to the grill we can use it.  He's become even fonder of the grill since we obtained a Big Green Egg, which is a combination grill and smoker that is called an egg but looks like a giant hand grenade sitting on my back deck.  It makes fantastic food.  At any rate, I've been trying to find new sources of things to grill, and one of the sources I've most recently acquired is Asian Grill. 

 

I actually really enjoyed this book.  It's not a long book, and Asia is a big place.  Trang therefore can't go in-depth into each individual ethnic group's recipes.  This is too bad, but I guess that if I wanted a 500-page treatise on Hmong outdoor cooking techniques I should have bought one.  (I haven't seen one for sale, either.)  The recipes are just different enough to be a breath of fresh air and rarely call for ingredients that are difficult to find.  The author draws from a wide variety of cultures to build this book, so it is a safe bet that people with a wide variety of tastes will find something to enjoy about this book.

 

As I mentioned, this book is kind of short, and it doesn't go into the kind of depth that a true nerd like me would prefer.  Not every recipe is illustrated, although there are more photos than in other books that I've reviewed recently and the pictures that exist are certainly lovely.  Those are really my biggest complaints about the book.  My husband had some issues with the techniques, but I am not a grill master or even a grill journeyman, I don't understand his issues so for me to go into them would not make much sense.  I'd probably get them wrong anyway!  Seriously, though, I enjoyed this book.

 

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Recipe: Laing (Chard in Coconut Milk)

Recipe Source: Cooked from the Heart Blog, March 1, 2008

 

I've been trying to find more vegetables that my husband and I can agree on.  He likes carrots; I find them to be too sweet.  He likes cabbage; I won't allow head cabbage to be cooked in my kitchen.  I like eggplant; he associates them with something unpleasant.  Ditto for any kind of squash.  The time of year is right for things like dark leafy greens - such as chard.  I made some braised chard for a St. Patrick's Day dinner I threw, and I was surprised to find that I really liked it.  So did my husband, despite its mild flavor.  When I saw JMom's recipe for chard, one that involved coconut milk and "several" chili peppers, depending on how spicy you want it," I knew that this one was going to be a winner. 

 

I didn't make a whole lot of changes to the original recipe, which you can find here.  I used two cans of coconut milk, just for the sake of convenience (and because, I'll admit, I really like coconut milk.)  I did make them light coconut milk, though.  I used four habaneros, because I like it spicy and I was feeling a little bit under the weather.  I used two tablespoons of jarred minced garlic in place of the chopped fresh garlic.  I didn't cook it all the way down.  While that may be inauthentic of me, I really liked how it looked as it was when I decided to serve it.  I also doubted my husband's willingness to eat it after it had been cooked down that much. 

 

At the end, I really liked this dish.  My use of habaneros kind of overpowered the more delicately flavored tofu dish I served with it, but on the other hand it helped me to feel a little better so I guess that's okay.  I loved the way that the greens tasted with the coconut milk!  Thanks for the recipe, JMom!

 

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