Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet: A World of Recipes for Every Day

by Padma Lakshmi

Recipes from around the world from the host of Bravo's Top Chef and Hulu's Taste the Nation .

Award-winning author Padma Lakshmi returns to the page with recipes for sophisticated international cuisine that are simple to prepare. Inspired by her travels to some of the most secluded corners of the planet, Padma shares the origins and secrets of her latest recipes -- but you don't need to travel the world in order to prepare them. Padma makes it easy to impress your guests with elegant savory and sweet dishes such as Keralan Crab Cakes, Mexican Macaroni and Cheese, Krispy Fried Chicken, BBQ Korean Short Ribs, and Chocolate Amaretto Ice Cream. Padma reinvents familiar dishes by introducing a host of flavors and spices, transforming the everyday kitchen into a global one.
Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet is both a culinary and personal scrapbook of Padma's life, highlighted by dazzling photography and evocative personal essays about her lifelong connection to food and cooking. From appetizers to entrees, soups to desserts, Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet is perfect for anyone who wants cooking to be easy, elegant, and unforgettable.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction, Food, International, Reference, Food and Drink

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 29, 2007

About the author

Padma Lakshmi is an American television host, producer, author, model, and activist whose multifaceted career has spanned fashion, food, literature, and social justice. Born Padma Parvati Lakshmi in Chennai, India, she immigrated to the United States as a child, where she was raised by her mother, a single parent and oncology nurse. Overcoming significant personal hardships, including bullying, health issues, and sexual trauma, Lakshmi has used her platform to advocate for marginalized voices and promote cultural understanding.
Lakshmi first rose to international prominence as a fashion model. Discovered while studying abroad in Madrid, she quickly became the first Indian model to build a successful career in fashion capitals like Paris, Milan, and New York. She worked with renowned designers such as Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, Ralph Lauren, and Alberta Ferretti, and posed for iconic photographers including Helmut Newton and Mario Testino. Her modeling work, often showcasing the seven-inch scar on her arm from a childhood car accident, challenged traditional beauty standards and redefined representation in the fashion industry.
She transitioned into television with hosting roles on culinary travel shows and ultimately became best known for hosting Top Chef, a position she held from 2006 to 2023. As both host and executive producer, Lakshmi earned multiple Emmy nominations and three Critics’ Choice Awards. She later created and produced Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi, a Hulu docuseries exploring immigrant and indigenous culinary traditions in the United States. The series received widespread critical acclaim, winning multiple Critics’ Choice Awards and a James Beard Foundation Award.
Lakshmi is also a best-selling author. Her debut cookbook Easy Exotic won a Gourmand World Cookbook Award, and her memoir Love, Loss, and What We Ate became a New York Times best-seller. Her other publications include Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet, The Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs, and the children’s book Tomatoes for Neela. She has also contributed essays and articles to The New York Times, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar, and guest-edited The Best American Travel Writing 2021.
In business, Lakshmi has built several successful ventures. She created The Padma Collection, featuring fine jewelry and home décor, and launched Padma’s Easy Exotic, a line of teas, spices, and organic foods. In 2024, she introduced Padma X Bare Necessities, a lingerie line celebrating body inclusivity.
A fierce advocate for women's health, Lakshmi co-founded the Endometriosis Foundation of America after being diagnosed with the condition herself. She is also an ACLU ambassador for immigration and women's rights and a United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador. Her activism spans reproductive rights, anti-colorism efforts, and immigrant justice.
Lakshmi’s achievements have earned her numerous honors, including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the Carnegie Corporation’s Great Immigrants Award, and inclusion in Time magazine’s 2023 list of the 100 most influential people. In 2024, she became a visiting scholar at MIT and received the ICON Award from Boston University. Through her work, Padma Lakshmi continues to empower communities, celebrate cultural diversity, and advocate for equality on a global scale.

Reviews

[Maze Branch Oak Park Public Library]

This cookbook was very well received with our What's Cooking group even though most of the recipes we tasted had mixed reviews. Apparently, there was something for everyone but not at the same time.

We found the instructions well written and liked the flexibility that Lakshmi gives to the home cook to use their preferred ingredients. Don't have fresh fruit? Canned is okay.

This book reads like a memoir but most in our group weren't interested in her essays relating her various experiences with food. Also, we would have preferred more photos of finished recipes than her family or ingredients especially if it meant that the additional space could have been used to increase the font size of the measurements (!). It was interesting to note that not one of the 10 participants viewed the reality show Top Chef that Lakshmi co-hosts.

Lakshmi incorporates chilies into a large percentage of her recipes. The fact that she doesn't share the spiciness level of each recipe was a little disappointing for those of us who are sensitive to peppers. She celebrates food and clearly enjoys it but doesn't go so far as to make the experience with the reader an educational one.

We sampled the following recipes...

- Red Snapper with Green Apple and Mint Chutney
- Spiced Candied Pecans
- Honeycomb and Fig Ice Cream
- Pochettes of Feta, Basil and Tomatoes
- Stefano's Roasted Potatoes
- White Sangria
- Mexican Cornbread
- BBQ Korean Short Ribs
- Jamaican Johnny Cake
- Cauliflower with Anise and Cashews
- Curried Long Beans with Black Eyed Peas
- Sweet Potatoes and Sauteed Lima Beans
- Basil and Blood Orange Salad
- Homemade Hot Chocolate

Everyone loved the pecans, the ice cream and the pochettes. All the other recipes had mixed levels of appreciation.

Readers may have difficulty initially connecting with the recipes in this book, but we think that with a little time and effort you will find a recipe (or two or three) that you will enjoy.

[Miya (severe pain struggles, slower at the moment)]

So many wonderful recipes!! Just about something for everyone. The soups are ridiculously yummy!!! There could be more photos, but that isnt a deal breaker. Good food is what matters.

[RH Walters]

What drew me into this book was a recipe for sauteed cauliflower with cashews and anise seed posted on a friend's blog. The Singapore noodles with shrimp and shitake mushrooms were easy and delicious. Made the corn muffins with chorizo and jalapeno and they were a bit much. The Pondicherry Lentil Salad and podi mas are also recipes I'll definitely make again, plus I still want to try the manchego and apricot preserves mini-sandwiches. I found Lakshmi's prose flat (I don't know her work on Iron Chef) but the recipes are stellar. There seems to be a discrepancy between the photos of her svelte belly and supposedly ravenous appetite for bacon and ice cream, but I'll chalk that up to our food-sick culture. I know now how much I like the book because it's time to return it to the library and I don't want to.

[Megan]

there were a lot of unfamiliar ingredients (for me): persian omani dried lemons that were so black they looked like rocks, asafetida powder (an onion/garlicky herby seasoning), amchoor (dried mango powder), anar dana (dried pomegranate seeds), etc. while their inclusion could be annoying (there are plenty of indian grocery stores near me but i have no idea if they actually carry this stuff), i found it interesting. many of her recipes seemed to require a lot of ingredients (though they seemed fairly reasonable time-wise).

excited to try her singapore noodles (88), chicken a la nueces de la india (110), and lamb meatballs in creamy spinach sauce (160). her asian-leaning recipes appealed to me more than the other ones, even though it seemed like curry powder and chilis dominated the flavor profiles.

[Vmichelle Skinner]

This is one of those cookbooks which has turned out to be at times more inspirational than practical. Meaning, in the store I look at it and think "oh I would make that, I would make that" as I flip the pages. But when I take it home, I think "oh, I'm not in the mood for that" and instead turn to something homey like lasagna or burgers. Oops. I have cooked from this. And at least one recipe knocked my socks off. It will be made again. But I also had a few mishaps. It turns out I'm not so fond of things involving tamarind. At least not yet. And the night I tried to cook the glazed cod, I found a live worm crawling in my cod. Not Padma's fault. But I ended up not cooking the cod since I'm squeamish. And now in my mind, when I think of this cookbook, I think of that cod.

[Greg]

This book is one of my go to cookbooks. Her career as a model exposed her to an eclectic mix of delicious world cuisine and though I have an embarrassment of riches in cookbooks this is one of my favourites.

Her recipes are written with just the right amount of personal anecdotes and tips to get you involved as a reader and enough description of technique to make them executable by aspiring home chefs. The book is beautifully photographed and laid out the only aspect maybe lacking is a list of equipment or essentials.

This book introduced me through it's recipes to many great ingredients like Omani lemons yuzu juice and amchor(mango powder). Though this book may expand your spice or ingredient needs none of them are particularly expensive and all of them last pretty much forever.

[Sarah]

As a child whenever we drove through a tunnel my parents would tell me to duck my head. One day while in the car with my perfect beautiful friend she said that in her family they held their breath. I wondered if I held my breath while going through a tunnel I might become beautiful like her. Of course this then required breath holding and head ducking. Now I don't think that eating like Padma Lakshmi will make me look like her but the recipes contained in this book just might be worth the effort. If the results don't pan out at least I'll have eaten well!

[N.L. Riviezzo]

Easy interesting recipes. Those without a well-stocked spice cabinet might find a few recipes challenging. One annoyance with this cookbook is a lack of recipes overall. Most of the book's pages consisted of pictures and only a small percentage of those pictures were of the actual recipes. Since many recipes had little stories about her life, captions on the personal photos would have been a very nice addition. A couple of the recipes are intriguing to me and I look forward to making them.

[Tina]

I recently borrowed this from the library. I was surprised that I enjoyed so much..not only for the recipes, but for Padma making a bit of her life "known" to us who watch her on Top Chef every season...A bit of a new found respect for her as not JUST another pretty face....albeit a very pretty one :)

[Dakota]

I was impressed with how accessible some of these recipes were, and the wide range of Lakshmi's international interests. The photos are gorgeous, though the ones of her modeling walking down the street are gratuitous unless you're a fan of her celebrity status. Get past that, and these recipes are great. The stories behind them are charming as well. Pleasantly surprised by this book.

[Carlie]

Every recipe I've made I've liked. Heavily Indian influenced, it introduced me to new spices I've never used before (very good) but some require expensive, hard to find ingredients (not very good) I've looked everywhere for orange oil!

[Jennifer Fenwick]

This is an OK cookbook. I really like her personal stories, but her ingredient list of (mainly) Indian food is hard to find, especially here in mid-MO. Alos, of the recipes I've tried, some have been too tangy for my taste! I prefer the hot ones!

[Lisa]

I love this book because it has so many vegetarian or easily modified to be vegetarian receipes. Once you buy the book you may need to stock up on some of the hard to find spices but well worth the effort if you like extraordinary taste and simple easy to put together meals.

[Judah]

While definitely a pretty good cookbook, I was a bit let down...as another reviewer mentioned, I could have gone for more of the "hot" aspect, but that's just my own personal tastes. All in all, however, it's a decent enough exploration of different cuisines.

[maggie]

Very pretty to look at and some very good recipes, but honestly, I hust don't have the time and many ingredients are not easily available unless you are in a somewhat sophisticated culinary shopping area, didn't work for me.

[Germaine]

There are some really good recipes here. The rustic mushroom soup is especially good. I've never been able to come up with the cheese rind she calls for, but it's still good with fresh grated Parmesian cheese on top.

[Beka]

Much better than her first book. This one has plenty of stories (like the last), but many more pictures and the recipes seem a bit more approachable. If I ever find that I like lychees, I want to try her lychee ice cream.

[Mrs.]

I was surprised by how much I liked this book. Interesting recipes and anecdotes, nicely photographed. My favorite recipes tend to be the Asian ones, while the oers serve as inspirational springboards.

[Aparnaa]

I like her approach to cooking - it's kind of a "what spices will go with this?" one.

[Amy]

Fantastic! I read it like a novel and then bought star anise - still haven't tried recipes but I did try a chocolate bar with bacon in it....

[Sashi]

Fun stories that go with easy recipes

[colleen]

haven't actually cooked anything from it yet, but read it like a novel after i got it for christmas. must go to the asian market.

[Emily]

Padma and her stories are certainly interesting, but most of these recipes call for esoteric ingredients (unless you're Indian or Asian), and one recipe I tried did not impress.

[Ali]

Still working on cooking from this one, but I really like her flavor combos and look forward to using this one more often.

[Mckinley]

Haven't tried too many recipes yet - but the Pineapple-Pomegranate cobbler alone is worth looking at this.

[Toni]

I wonder - is there any chance that if I were to make all the recipes in this beautiful book I could look like her? Oh, I guess you're right, probably not!

[Sara]

This is a cool concept for a cookbook. It's fusion cooking from an Indian base and incorporating most other spicy cuisines. Basically, YUM all the way through.

[Tia]

Delicious, but my kitchen is currently too hot to play with some of these recipes. Also, the library wants it's book back.

[Chris]

Beautiful book but the recipes didn't appeal to my tastes.

[Sandra]

The green bean recipe with coconut is lovely, fast and addictive.