Amma's Cookbook : From Indian Village to Internet

Rating:
Summary: A book to treasure
Review: About a year ago, I bought Amma's Cookbook. Now, almost a year later, having cooked my way through all the recipes, all I can say is, well, it is a damn good book. Practical instructions, a sincere narration and delicious end product - well, what more do you want from a cookbook?

Rating:
Summary: You need every spice ever created to use this!
Review: I am an American woman married to an Indian man. "Amma" is talked about so much that I thought this book would be great. And the pictures DO look great, but I never have all the ingredients to make more than a handful of the recipes! I have a lot of Indian spices at home, but this calls for weird spices that I've never even seen in Indian grocery stores.

The recipes are not difficult, but as I said, the ingredient list is exhaustive. I would not recommend this book unless you have obscure spices in your kitchen (this goes WAY beyond cardamom, turmeric, and cumin!!!)

Rating:
Summary: Good, but many recipes don't work
Review: I like this book and have developed several great recipes using it as a good starting point. I'll get right to the point of my quibble. The measurements for the liquid portion of several of the recipes is way off, as in totally off. For instance: in the recipe for Malai Kofta one part of the recipe calls for making a paste of several ingredients using 1 cup of water. When I first saw this I thought "Way too much water". However as a first run I followed the recipe exactly. As expected the blend was a watery soup, not at all a paste. I arrived at the right paste by dry grinding the ingredients then regrinding them in a mortar using 1/8 cup water. Perfect paste. So the recipe in the book was off by a factor of 800% on the liquid required. I experienced the same problem of way too much liquid on other recipes. The liquid portions are so far off I've wondered if there is a translator mixing up tablespoons with cups. I've started ignoring the liquid quantity in the recipe and using what seems right to me. Following that path the results have been excellent, so the book is worthwhile. I just have a problem with a cookbook that is so wildly off on such a key ingredient. If you're an experienced Indian cook who can use your own judgement this book is a lot of fun. If you're looking for a cookbook where the actual recipe followed exactly produces good results, look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good Buy
Review: I like this book. The tips on the side are very good and the recipes are authentic..

Rating:
Summary: surprised!!!
Review: It is so refreshing to come across a cookbook where the cook is fondly and confidently explaining the intricacies of cooking without ever revealing how many pakoras she/he can snaffle down while waiting for the remaining batches to be fried! And, thank God, there is no chastising of food fascists (the current favourite word of celebrity cooks), no repetition of "use the freshest of ingredients only (How many of us go to the grocery store and pay to buy wilted lettuce?)". You get the point. Delightful to read , Amma (is it really a woman?)seems to be a brilliant cook. Just try her Dum ka Murgh - were Proust to eat that as a child (apart from the Madelienes), literature would have been richer by, hopefully, another memory recall and another million words! I cannot recommend this enough.

Rating:
Summary: A Delicious Find!
Review: This is one of those books, a very rare find, that I'm sure will one day be a collectors item. My friends tell me I have the largest cookbook collections of anyone they know, and I can say that Amma's Cookbook is one of the most remarkable cookbooks I've ever bought.I was lucky to find the book in a bookstore while visiting Sydney, just stumbled across it, it was tucked away behind several other books.

Most the other Indian cookbooks I know feature celebrity chefs who cook for westerners, or who like to play up the exotic side of Indian cooking, their own celebrityhood. You know what I mean. Amma says the food should speak for itself. She was a housewife most her life, then she started a cooking website called Ammas.com. The site is now apparently one of the largest Asian sites on the Internet. Amma means "mother" in many South Asian languages and the woman behind this book seems to have taken on that name herself because most Internet users know her as "Amma" now. I visited the site and couldn't believe my eyes, thousands of recipes, thousands of lifestyle tips, people writing their questions Dear Amma, I love you etc...it's an amazing story! The kind of thing someone like Oprah or some other popular program would pick up if they ever found out about it, or could figure out who Amma really is. Who knows, maybe they will.But my impression is this Amma would prefer to remain anonymous. More power to her!Myself,I want to know more about her because I love her cooking and she's so inspiring, especially her love for motherhood and cooking, and for her own mother who inspired her in life (her mother sounds like a remarkable woman!).

The books gives unique authentic Indian recipes that are NOT on the website, and which are direct from the villages of India. They're translated into western ingredients and cooking methods so western readers can cook the food. Some really incredible dishes, like rabbit curry, crab, lobster, duck, things you won't find in your typical Indian restaurant. I never knew they cooked duck and rabbit in India! The dishes are prepared with an affection, tenderness, mastery of spices and ingredients you won't find with the more popular cookbook authors.

One more great thing about this cookbook is the stories of life in India. Like I said straight out of India, as if you're there! How many westerners get to experience life in an Indian village? This book takes you there.If you buy one cookbook this year, this is the one I recommend. It makes all the other Indian cookbooks seem like cheap entertainment!

Rating:
Summary: Very Good Buy
Review: When I saw this cookbook I couldn't believe my eyes. The photos are very well done and the book is presented in easy to follow format: categories such as Vegetarian, Lamb and Game, Dals, Rices, Breads, Appetizers, Eggs and Poultry, and Seafood.

These are dishes you won't find in other Indian cookbooks. They come from Indian homes and not from the Indian restaurants you find in USA. It's good mix of veg and non-veg items also. What I most appreciate is how Amma finds ways to prepare these foods with Western ingredients and cooking utensils. Her devotion to cooking and motherhood are what make her so popular I believe. My wife uses the Ammas.com website almost every day now. Its like her own mother on the Internet. She has learned a lot about cooking from Amma. No food is more authentic than our own mothers and Amma gives that feeling in the book (she also talks about her own mother in the book and how she inspired her). Of all the recipes in the book I recommend spicy ginger chicken, the prawn fry and the carrot in capsicum sauce. As delicious as I've ever tasted!