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Cooking of India
Indian cookbook covers history and recipes.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1969
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About the author
Santha Rama Rau
27 books9 followersSantha Rama Rau (24 January 1923 – 21 April 2009) was an Indian American travel writer.
Source: Wikipedia.
Source: Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 1, 2024
Nice book. Tasty recipes
January 2, 2024
The author adeptly conveys the different-ness of Indian culture. Even when saying something that sounds perfectly normal to American ears:
She goes on to explain that she means it literally as well as emotionally.
Her experience of Indian culture is also uncommonly wide, even for someone born and raised in India. Her father was a southerner and part of the Indian civil service. Her mother was a northerner, but at college in Madras in the far south. Their only common tongue was English.
Because both her family inheritance and her father’s job meant travel, she has a familiarity with Indian food across the various geographical cultures of the new country. All of it, however, comes with one important caveat: her parents could be married in India despite hailing from such different cultures that they spoke different languages because “both families belonged to the same caste, Brahmin, and both to the same subcaste of Brahmins, Saraswat.”
And so she warns us, “the sort of homes” she has lived in, the friends she has, cross vast geographies and cultures, but remain Brahmin. Even the Christian region features Christians who descend from, and thus are of, the Brahmin caste.
This is one of the rare volumes of the Foods of the World series where the language matches the amazing photography. Describing one lavish wedding party in Hyderabad I forgot, it was so fantastical, that she was describing an event she personally attended and was not constructing a fantasy world à la Eddison or Tolkien.
The graphics include amazing paintings and photography. There is a two-page spread of a field strewn with red peppers, a single woman seated in the middle sorting through them like Thor on the beach,
Spices—curries, and masalas—play a very important role in each of India’s cultures.
We live today in an amazing time of international plenty. Where she writes that “Such unfamiliar spices as fresh ginger root or black mustard seeds…” might require a specialty store or even mail order, it is the rare grocery today that does not at least include ginger root among their produce.
I get the feeling, occasionally, that she is somewhat on the spectrum. Despite her amazing descriptions and choices of what to highlight about the food and the culture surrounding the food, there are occasionally lines like this:
Sanskrit literature has more of a sense of humor than she does, unless she was very drily emphasizing the humor.
At one point, she relays a funny story about a cousin of hers and the strong feelings cooks have about masala ingredients. Her parenthetical explanation is longer than the story.
The food is equally amazing. The first dish I made was the Murg Haychi (Chicken Cardamom). It’s chicken marinated in a masala of yogurt, cardamom, ginger, garlic, fennel, and red pepper, and then cooked in a pot with saffron, butter, cinnamon, cloves, and onions. It’s even better than it sounds.
Ditto with the Jhinga Kari (Shrimp Curry). An interesting prep I haven’t seen before, she calls for marinating the shrimp with vinegar and salt for several minutes. The curry is coconut milk, coriander, ginger, garlic, onion, turmeric, cumin, red & black pepper, and cilantro.
I drink a lot of “breakfast lassi”, yogurt with a bit of sugar or honey and some other flavoring (such as cardamom). They’re filling because they’re mostly yogurt. She offers a more traditional lassi of cumin and salt, made with three times as much water as yogurt; it’s a refreshing drink but not a filling one, and must be served cold for the best flavor.
For vegetables, I made Khumbi Bhaji (Green Peas and Mushrooms), which is a basic dish of fresh mushrooms and peas with a sauce of black mustard seeds, onions, turmeric, yogurt, and cilantro. It also required making some Garam Masala. Going by the list of Garam Masalas in Lord Krishna’s Cuisine, hers is Delhi-Style. The ratio of ingredients is different, but except for adding black peppercorns, they are the same. This makes it one of the simpler garam masalas.
Very tasty with peas and mushrooms, too. I haven’t yet tried it on popcorn.
Like most of the Foods of the World series, this one is available for checkout on the Internet Archive. Judging from the semi-random sampling of recipes I chose (while the chicken was because I like cardamom, the shrimp was solely because I had all the ingredients) it’s worth checking out.
The spiral recipe-only book is not there, which is too bad because it always contains a few recipes not in the main book. Of the recipes I’ve tried so far, the Lassi is only in the recipe book. For four servings, take 1 cup yogurt, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, 1 teaspoon salt, 3 cups ice water, and blend until smooth. Pour into a chilled pitcher and serve from chilled glasses.
The second time I made it, I replaced some of the ice water with actual ice, to keep it even colder, and that worked very well.
I also suspect that she is not using the very fine granulated salt that we have, but rather a coarser salt. When I use Morton’s in her recipe, the result is slightly too salty, but when I use freshly-ground sea salt, it comes out right.
My grandmother’s kitchen was a very special place.
She goes on to explain that she means it literally as well as emotionally.
…like the kitchen of any orthodox Hindu home… Nobody was allowed to enter it with his shoes on; my grandmother herself had to bathe and put on clean clothes before she could go in, and we younger children, considered as yet unpredictable and possibly lax in the thoroughness of our washing habits, could go no farther than the doorway. Inside, you could quite literally and safely have eaten off the floor… a base of dried mud, over which a thin layer of cow dung is spread by hand.
Her experience of Indian culture is also uncommonly wide, even for someone born and raised in India. Her father was a southerner and part of the Indian civil service. Her mother was a northerner, but at college in Madras in the far south. Their only common tongue was English.
Because both her family inheritance and her father’s job meant travel, she has a familiarity with Indian food across the various geographical cultures of the new country. All of it, however, comes with one important caveat: her parents could be married in India despite hailing from such different cultures that they spoke different languages because “both families belonged to the same caste, Brahmin, and both to the same subcaste of Brahmins, Saraswat.”
And so she warns us, “the sort of homes” she has lived in, the friends she has, cross vast geographies and cultures, but remain Brahmin. Even the Christian region features Christians who descend from, and thus are of, the Brahmin caste.
When the pickle has matured… it holds the sudden excitement of—say—seeing one’s first tiger in a jungle.
This is one of the rare volumes of the Foods of the World series where the language matches the amazing photography. Describing one lavish wedding party in Hyderabad I forgot, it was so fantastical, that she was describing an event she personally attended and was not constructing a fantasy world à la Eddison or Tolkien.
The familiar phrase in recipes “season to taste,” has a peculiarly individual meaning in India. It refers strictly to your taste, rather than to that of some omniscient, arbitrary outside authority. You should have sufficient trust in your own palate, and enough of a sense of adventure to improvise—but, as in Indian music, to improvise within the rules.
The graphics include amazing paintings and photography. There is a two-page spread of a field strewn with red peppers, a single woman seated in the middle sorting through them like Thor on the beach,
…a farm woman, near Madurai, in South India, picks out rotten pods from a field strewn with drying chilies, and turns over the good pods to let both sides dry in the sun.
Spices—curries, and masalas—play a very important role in each of India’s cultures.
The variety, the combinations and the uses of spices are the major factors that distinguish Indian cooking from any other cuisine in the world.
We live today in an amazing time of international plenty. Where she writes that “Such unfamiliar spices as fresh ginger root or black mustard seeds…” might require a specialty store or even mail order, it is the rare grocery today that does not at least include ginger root among their produce.
With sufficient piety and ingenuity a Hindu could make a holiday of almost any day of the year.
I get the feeling, occasionally, that she is somewhat on the spectrum. Despite her amazing descriptions and choices of what to highlight about the food and the culture surrounding the food, there are occasionally lines like this:
A magnificently strong and versatile Kerala fish curry achieves its characteristic, bright red color through the use of powdered chilies and the South Indian fruit called kokum, which is described in Sanskrit literature as resembling, in color and texture, the mouth of a beautiful woman—not, presumably, in taste, which is exceedingly acid.
Sanskrit literature has more of a sense of humor than she does, unless she was very drily emphasizing the humor.
At one point, she relays a funny story about a cousin of hers and the strong feelings cooks have about masala ingredients. Her parenthetical explanation is longer than the story.
No one ever wishes you happiness in India. This is supposed to be in your own hands, of your own making.
The food is equally amazing. The first dish I made was the Murg Haychi (Chicken Cardamom). It’s chicken marinated in a masala of yogurt, cardamom, ginger, garlic, fennel, and red pepper, and then cooked in a pot with saffron, butter, cinnamon, cloves, and onions. It’s even better than it sounds.
Ditto with the Jhinga Kari (Shrimp Curry). An interesting prep I haven’t seen before, she calls for marinating the shrimp with vinegar and salt for several minutes. The curry is coconut milk, coriander, ginger, garlic, onion, turmeric, cumin, red & black pepper, and cilantro.
I drink a lot of “breakfast lassi”, yogurt with a bit of sugar or honey and some other flavoring (such as cardamom). They’re filling because they’re mostly yogurt. She offers a more traditional lassi of cumin and salt, made with three times as much water as yogurt; it’s a refreshing drink but not a filling one, and must be served cold for the best flavor.
For vegetables, I made Khumbi Bhaji (Green Peas and Mushrooms), which is a basic dish of fresh mushrooms and peas with a sauce of black mustard seeds, onions, turmeric, yogurt, and cilantro. It also required making some Garam Masala. Going by the list of Garam Masalas in Lord Krishna’s Cuisine, hers is Delhi-Style. The ratio of ingredients is different, but except for adding black peppercorns, they are the same. This makes it one of the simpler garam masalas.
Very tasty with peas and mushrooms, too. I haven’t yet tried it on popcorn.
Like most of the Foods of the World series, this one is available for checkout on the Internet Archive. Judging from the semi-random sampling of recipes I chose (while the chicken was because I like cardamom, the shrimp was solely because I had all the ingredients) it’s worth checking out.
The spiral recipe-only book is not there, which is too bad because it always contains a few recipes not in the main book. Of the recipes I’ve tried so far, the Lassi is only in the recipe book. For four servings, take 1 cup yogurt, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, 1 teaspoon salt, 3 cups ice water, and blend until smooth. Pour into a chilled pitcher and serve from chilled glasses.
The second time I made it, I replaced some of the ice water with actual ice, to keep it even colder, and that worked very well.
I also suspect that she is not using the very fine granulated salt that we have, but rather a coarser salt. When I use Morton’s in her recipe, the result is slightly too salty, but when I use freshly-ground sea salt, it comes out right.
Read
May 9, 2013I got this for myself in the late 70's to learn Indian cookery. I did. I still love this set.
Packing away now as we declutter the house, preparing to put it on the market.
Packing away now as we declutter the house, preparing to put it on the market.
November 13, 2017
LOVE you Rochelle. love veronica
Want to Read
December 7, 2022Her best book by far. Brody is just hysterical in this memoir, and yes, she is the sort of person who would go prancing down the street in a gorilla suit to cure her shyness.
December 16, 2022
As a child, my mother had this entire "foods of the world" series from TIME-LIFE books in our childhood home. While on vacation in Hawaii or Mexico while I was in junior high school, I did a written report of this book over the winter. It ws probably the first book from the 1970's dealing with the recipes of India and its history & cooking techniques from that particular country.
Nowadays, Indian cuisine is more broadly termed as "ethnic food" or "South Asian" cooking, & is also ubiquitous. Most is filling, but also light and scrumptious, even with smaller portions served at home or in public. The common epithet describing and regarding. Indian cooking with "it's all about the spices" still holds true today.
Nowadays, Indian cuisine is more broadly termed as "ethnic food" or "South Asian" cooking, & is also ubiquitous. Most is filling, but also light and scrumptious, even with smaller portions served at home or in public. The common epithet describing and regarding. Indian cooking with "it's all about the spices" still holds true today.
March 12, 2021
Part of the Time-Life series. Although an older book, this volume is still the best introduction to Indian cookery that I know of, and the prose is both excellent and evocative.
Available at Open Library:
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL65640...
Available at Open Library:
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL65640...
April 13, 2012
Where my mom (and now me) get all our indian recipes from. Also includes: Recipes: The Cooking of India (Foods of the World) [Spiral-Bound]:
http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-Cooking...
http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-Cooking...
November 22, 2010
a delightful but incomplete reference to indian cooking in the 1960s. of particular interest was seeing the setup and appliances of the average indian kitchen.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews