Flavorful Shortcuts to Indian/Pakistani Cooking: Winner of Beverly Hills Book Award 2016 Showcases

I own dozens of cookbooks and most of the time only a few of the recipes are any good. So far my wife and I have made four things from the book and they all came out better than expected.Our first experiment was Mango Lassi. We had to go to the indian market and get the canned mango pulp for the best result as per the recipe. Our first attempt was with mango juice from the supermarket and it wasn't that good. When we did it correctly with the mango pulp it was fabulous. The recipe calls for lemon yogurt and that was good but we ran out and made another batch with pineapple yogurt and it was even better.My second try was Chicken Karahi. I followed the recipe exactly until I got to tomato puree. I wasn't too sure what that was so I used tomato paste instead. With the tomato paste it was very similar to a spaghetti sauce but with a slight Indian under tone. Not spicy at all but very flavorful. It put it on some ravioli that I got frozen from the supermarket.Finally we made two dishes for dinner, Aloo Gajjar Mattar and Easy Chicken Tikka. The Aloo dish was made with potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and peas. The Chicken Tikka is chicken marinated in a yogurt mixture. We followed the recipes and both were fantastic. We learned at this point to double the recipe so we would have plenty of leftovers.This book does not have fancy color photographs. Instead, there are black and white images that are more instructional. The magic of this book is in the text. The recipes are detailed but the real benefit is concept. The first part of the book is exactly that.Do yourself a favor before you start anything. Check through a few recipes and start collecting the spices. I have other Indian cookbooks and over time I have just about everything any recipe could ask for. This book requires a lot less than other books I have seen.

I am not sure the vision/direction of this book. Is it supposed to be authentic Pakistani recipe book or Americanized Indo/Pak recipes? I really wanted authentic recipes like what get at local Pakistani restaurants. So far I have made the Chicken Karhi which is good, the Chicken Curry which was disappointing and seemed to be missing something, the lamb and spinach was okay but not worth all the work involved and the Keema which my family loves Keema but this recipe was lackluster, tasteless and dry. I just don't really see the recipes in here as being shortened. All of them so far were time consuming at least 90+ minutes.

Talk about out of my comfort zone ... After inviting 26 people to our home for a night of wonderful food I then realized I had NO idea what I was in for ... BUT ... here was Farhana's book ... and even a middle-road cook like me was in with a WIN!I took my time, as she says, read through the book and concentrated on the 6 recipes she recommends to start ... and POOF .. shopping happened without fear and COOKING happened ... (add wonderful smells here!) ... guests were fed and I am onto more recipes!Get it, Read it, DO IT! :-)

I'm new to Indian cooking and so far everything is turning out well. I've made the Chicken Biryanni and Kofta Curry and it was fantastic! The book does not have beautiful photography but the recipes are fabulous! I actually kind of like its simplicity. This is a great introduction to this amazing cuisine.

I love Indian food, and I love cooking, but have always felt intimidated to tackle indian dishes. I was excited to see this book on Amazon, though a little hesitant of its claims. I must say I was pleasantly surprised! The instructions were easy to follow, and the dishes came out delicious!! I noticed that a lot of the recipes use the same exotic spices, so now that I have stocked up on them, the cost of cooking these dishes is minimal. Love it. My husband is my biggest critic, but he gave me two thumbs up :)