Product Description

The premise is simple: with five common spices and a few basic ingredients, home cooks can create fifty mouthwatering Indian dishes, as diverse as they are delicious. Cooking teacher Ruta Kahate has chosen easy-to-find spices coriander, cumin, mustard, cayenne pepper, and turmeric to create authentic, accessible Indian dishes everyone will love. Roasted Lamb with Burnt Onions uses just two spices and three steps resulting in a meltingly tender roast. Steamed Cauliflower with a Spicy Tomato Sauce and Curried Mushrooms and Peas share the same three spices, but each tastes completely different. Suggested menus offer inspiration for entire Indian dinners. For quick and easy Indian meals, keep it simple with 5 Spices, 50 Dishes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4098 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-31
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 132 pages

About the Author
Ruta Kahate teaches regional Indian cooking from her home-based school in Oakland, California, which has been featured on the Fine Living Network.

Susie Cushner is a Boston-based photographer whose work can be found in many cookbooks, including Martha's Vineyard Table and The New England Table.

Customer Reviews

5 Spices, 50 dishes
I first checked this out of the library. I renewed it three times and than gave up and bought my own copy. The food is wonderful and she simplifies recipes to a point where even a not very good cook can achieve great results. If you like Indian Food this is a very good basic cook book. You'll be rewarded with good healthy food and you don't have to lay out money to go to an Indian restaurant. And if you've never experienced the wonders of Indian food this is a great introduction. I would recommend cutting down on the amount of cayenne pepper she calls for. I'm a chicken and don't like my food that hot. But if you're a real Indian cooking buff and like it hot got ahead.

Indian Cuisine Simplified
An excellent introduction to Indian cooking. The book is well organized and the instructions are easy to follow. I was particularly impressed how you could obtain such variety with so few spices.

Amazing! What I've been looking for!
I LOVE this cookbook! As a lover of Indian food and a "flexitarian," I've been in search of a good, yet simple Indian cookbook. The few that I perused in a bookstore, while having nice photos, were not interesting, and definitely seemed a bit complicated (not so accessible).

[...]

The first night I got this book, I read it before bedtime and haven't put it down since. The style of writing is friendly and encouraging. The premise that Ruta Kahate uses is that you can create simple and delicious Indian meals (dishes) using five spices-- cumin seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, turmeric powder, and cayenne powder. The book is organized by Vegetables, Dals, Chicken and Eggs, Rice and Bread, etc. and she uses a colored circle as an indicator for which of the five spices (sometimes one, sometimes all) the recipe uses. Each recipe is about a page long and she introduces them sometimes with an anecdote, and always with useful tips and encouragement.

The photos are gorgeous and the recipe offering is superb! So far (I've had this book for three days), I've made the Spinach Raita with Toasted Cumin and the Railway Potatoes! Both dishes were excellent! I cannot wait to make more of the dishes from this cookbook! Did I say that I LOVE this cookbook?