Bon Appegeek

Reviews are in alphabetical order by author’s last name except for new reviews at the top.

Seductions of Rice, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. Almost frighteningly comprehensive. More information about rice than you could possibly need, with warm narrative and plenty of recipes to try. The hardcover edition has full-color photographs (this paperback does not) and appears to be out of print but is available used. [Also posted in Specialty/misc cookbooks.]

The Indian Grocery Store Demystified (Take It with You Guides) (Paperback), by Linda Bladholm. Review pending.

Asian Ingredients: A Guide to the Foodstuffs of China, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam (Paperback), by Bruce Cost. Review pending.

Flavors of Korea: Delicious Vegetarian Cuisine, by Deborah Coultrip-Davis and Young Sook Ramsay. Wishlisted

Quick And Easy Indian Cooking (Paperback), by Madhur Jaffrey and Philip Salaverry (photographer). Review pending.

Betty Crocker’s Indian Home Cooking, by Raghavan Iyer. You wouldn’t think that Betty Crocker could pull off a decent Indian cookbook, but find a good author and it can be done. Iyer’s recipes almost always taste great. But the main draw of this book is the spectacular introduction with full-color photographs of every major and some not-so-major ingredients along with translations to help you find them. I would advise any beginning Indian cook to start with this book. True to Betty Crocker’s style, every recipe lists nutritional information, though some of it is faulty. They seem to confuse coconut water with coconut milk, thus falsely lowering the fat and calorie content of the coconut-milk based dishes.

Classic Indian Cooking, by Julie Sahni. Truly a classic. The dishes out of this book have flavor unmatched by my many other Indian cookbooks, most likely due to to Sahni’s insistence on caramelizing the onions. The recipes take time and care, but they’re worth it. Do not be put off by the lack of pictures—the recipes will make up for it.

The Breath of a Wok: Unlocking the Spirit of Chinese Wok Cooking Through Recipes and Lore (Hardcover), by Grace Young and Alan Richardson (photographer). Amazing read. Young is painstakingly thorough in some of her research, listing multiple ways to season a wok without insisting on one method.