Raji Cuisine : Indian Flavors, French Passion

Rating:
Summary: Not what I had hoped for.
Review: I cook often and adore Indian food. These recipes are a bit labor intensive as they often require oils and other elements that you must make before beginning the recipes. And the results are good but lack that Indian 'spice' (not heat - but intensity, rather) that I had hoped for. So I will continue to play are with Madhur Jaffrey's authentic (and delicious) recipes, incorporating French elements on my own. I have had better results that way.

Rating:
Summary: Beware: This is not flavorful Indian food!
Review: I thought this would be the best cookbook ever - Indian spices with elegant French fare. Well, I've made three things from this book and all were pretty bland. If you already have basic cooking skills, you'd be better served by buying an Indian cookbook and applying that philosophy to cooking to meats and vegetables.

Rating:
Summary: Simple and Beautiful
Review: She has a beautiful philosophy and created a simple book. It is really French dishes with Indian accents (with the exception of some phyllo). As she puts it, Indian cooking tends to disguise the main ingredient while French cooking does the opposite. I learned from her that French cooking is really the simplest cooking, and not to be intimidated by it. And, likewise, not to be intimidated by Indian ingredients. I really love this cookbook.

Rating:
Summary: Elegant Indian Fare
Review: Usually cookbooks that are photographed so beautifully have recipes that are impossible to follow or replicate. This is not the case in Raji Cuisine. Most Indian cooking is quite labor intensive, requiring numerous steps. Most of Jallepalli's recipes were quite easy. The real test came when I prepared a 4 course meal using the recipes in the book. My guest were quite pleased, and loved the variety in flavors that usually don't detect in average Indian fare. Since it is sometimes difficult to decide what wine should go with intensely spiced food, I appreciated the wine suggestions for each of the main courses.