Rating: 
Summary: Help for a non-Indian
Review: My husband is from Kerala, and I got hooked on the food while traveling there. He always knows how food should taste, but he isn't nearly as good at how it should be made. This book allowed us to make the dishes he remembers from his childhood. It is the best Indian cookbook I have tried, and it uses English terms for the ingrediaents, so you can actually find them.
Rating:
Summary: Help for a non-Indian
Review: My husband is from Kerala, and I got hooked on the food while traveling there. He always knows how food should taste, but he isn't nearly as good at how it should be made. This book allowed us to make the dishes he remembers from his childhood. It is the best Indian cookbook I have tried, and it uses English terms for the ingrediaents, so you can actually find them.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Indian Food, Easy to Follow Recipes
Review: My recipe for success: After you receive this book, make a list of all the spices and cooking stuff (like Tamarind Paste) that you don't have. Go shopping. Come home and start making the best Indian food you have ever tasted. Begin inviting your friends over for the best Indian food they have ever tasted. Enjoy.This wonderful cookbook is a treat in many ways. There are beautiful pictures, clear explanations of techniques, detailed descriptions of products you need (and substitutions if you can't find curry leaves, like me!), and accurate estimates of time needed for preparation and cooking. And that doesn't even take into account the marvelous food that you will rather effortlessly produce! Indian food is really starting to become popular in the US, and in Europe South Indian food (the kind featured in this book) is the trendiest wave of Indian cuisine. I find the cuisine of South India less heavy and "brighter" than many Mughal dishes, and I think that even those of you who haven't particularly liked Indian food in the past will gobble up the food in this book. Some of my favorites include Shrimp Thiyal (yummy coconut-shrimp curry), Lamb Korma (admittedly a Mughal dish, and you can easily substitute chicken), and the spinach Dhal (green split peas with spinach and flakes of coconut).
Rating:
Summary: food on a par with the best Indian restaurants in NYC
Review: Previous reviewers have covered most of the bases - the book is beautifully designed, has lovely pictures; the recipes call for easily obtainable ingredients, are carefully explained and straightforward to execute; the results are incredibly delicious! With most cookbooks, we eventually settle into a few favorite recipes. With this one, almost every time we try a new recipe, it is added to our list of favorites - stir-fried shrimp... spinach pachadi... cilantro & mint chutney... spicy tomato chutney... etc. etc. We've given this book to all our cooking friends, & they love it, too. Kudos & thanks to Maya Kaimal MacMillan & her father!
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Summary: The closest to home-town receipes ever found!!
Review: The book is well written and demonstrated with color photos. This makes it very impressive. The receipes are easy to follow. I gave this book as a gift to my son, since he always asks me the receipes for some of the Kerala food. Every time I give him the receipes, he loses it or complaints that the measurment is not easy to follow. Then I found this book and I was really excited. This is the best Kerala receipe book that I have ever found that is close to my home town cooking. Thanks to Maya.
Rating:
Summary: Authentic Kerala food
Review: This book stands out in the fact that Maya has presented Kerala cooking in its authentic flavors. I really enjoyed using this book. A note of caution though - be careful in using the chili powder she suggests; use 3/4 the amount she suggests - it is still going to be hot (hot to Kerala standards)
Rating:
Summary: Easy to prepare recipes yield unusual, delicious dishes.
Review: This cookbook is a great, easy to follow introduction to the wonders of Indian cooking. We have tried several recipes and each one has been a great success. The author doesn't require a lot of unusual ingredients and after one trip to the store you will have most everything you need for the vast majority of the recipes. A terrific find!
Rating:
Summary: This cookbook belongs right at the top. Stunning food!
Review: This cookbook is exceptional. The recipes are clearly presented but the real proof is in the eating. The flavors are exquisite, and the recipes give me lots of alternatives. I own well over 40 Indian cookbooks (have lost count) and this ranks right up at the top!
Rating: 
Summary: A very concise cookbook, wonderful, easy recipes!
Review: This cookbook was given to me as a gift. I read it from cover to cover and then decided to try to prepare a few of the recipes. The first one was Shrimp in Coconut Sauce. It was wonderful! It was hard to put my fork down! I then ventured on to make Lamb Korma substituting pork. I also tried a green bean side dish and a cucumber-yogurt salad. All three recipes were winners. I invited company over for that dinner, and they couldn't stop raving over the food! There are so many other recipes in the book I can't wait to try. This is one of my favorite cookbooks!
Rating:
Summary: Easy to follow, delicious recipes
Review: Though we love Indian food, we rarely cooked it at home before we bought this book. Too time consuming. Since we've had this book, we've made almost every recipe in the book and several have become favorites, easy to make even on a busy weeknight (nightly favorites include chole, green beans thoren, fish aviyal made with salmon). The recipes are easy to follow and come with accurate predictions of the amount of time needed. The outcome is delicious. We've even learned to make successful puri (after having tried disasterously before), dosa, good paneer, and other things we hadn't dared try before this cookbook convinced us that Indian cooking was completely manageable.
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