Curry Books

There's a bit in Jackie Brown where Bob de Niro, who has just got out of prison has comedy sex with Bridget Fonda. Later, Sam Jackson says (paraphrased - I can't believe it isn't in the IMDB quotes pages) "Did you fuck her? She likes to fuck. It's a shame she isn't very good at it."

Well, that's basically me in the kitchen. I am an enthusiastic but not-very-good cook. With that in mind, there are two books from which I have cooked tasty curries at home.

The first, is the classic The Curry Secret. It gives you recipes apparently used in an actual English curry-house, and explains the principles behind things much more than most cookbooks. The curries are easy to cook, and pretty tasty, but the recipes are based around making industrial quantities of stuff. First, you make two gallons of base for the sauces (a couple of hours of boiling and skimming), then you turn that, some more spices and meat into the tasty curry of your choice (takes about 15 minutes). There are recipes for naan and tandoori stuff which are pretty good though (and they are honest about this) it doesn't work that well without an actual tandoor. However, the explanations for chapathis, parathas, marinades, kebabs, &c. are good and work pretty well. It's only a fiver, so you'd be daft not to add it to your next Amazon order. One tip: you might benefit form doubling the quantities of spices (at least if your spices are not very fresh) and equally reducing the amount of oil might do no harm if you aren't looking for the authentic curry house texture.

(The people who do this also have one called Chinese Cookery Secrets which purports do to the same for Chinese cookery. It is well-written and thorough in its explanations but I haven't actually cooked from it yet.)

The other is Floyd's India. The style is different - here there is almost no preparation (save marination for some dishes) and because there is no standard sauce base the curries vary a lot more than they do in your usual English curry house. Here there are apparently-more-authentic versions of classic dishes like dhansak, rogan gosht and vindaloo, all of which are excellent. The principle here is to make a spice mix (masala), dry or a paste with oil, water or vinegar, fry it, add meat (where involved) and then add liquid and cook. They don't take much more than 10 minutes to prepare and 20 minutes cooking time, and the results have generally been excellent. Also highly recommended.