Notes about Recipes in this book

• Fragrant lemon rice

  • Ro_ on March 16, 2020

    A delicious and unusual rice recipe. I used half the amount of chillies stated and it was still spicy!

• Coconut rice

  • Ro_ on March 26, 2023

    Looking at the recipe ingredients again as I write this note, I realise that I forgot to stir the ghee in at the very end which is annoying, but I guess at least I saved some calories! This rice was fragrant and delicious. I could only get chopped fresh coconut, and blitzed it in the food processor but some bits were still biggish, and the texture of the bigger pieces wasn't great in the end product (though my partner said he quite liked it) - next time I'd be really sure to get all the coconut very finely grated and well toasted.

• Jodhpuri pulau

  • colm_5ig694 on March 24, 2026

    My go to recipe for Indian rice, great with any sort of curry….works even if you don’t have all the ingredients, I usually use butter instead of ghee…the ingredient list here is missing the cumin seeds

• Floyd's imperial biryani

  • Ro_ on April 17, 2023

    I made a much smaller quantity than the recipe, and ended up using half lamb neck and half chicken leg (all deboned and diced). The flavours of the meat layer were really nice, but overall the biryani was too dry. Recipe says to get the meat down to a stage where it is "quite dry" but next time I'd leave more liquid. The rice also was a bit bland because it wasn't cooked with any aromatics. Overall this was an OK biryani recipe but I've definitely made better.

• Simmered lentils (Chana dal)

  • Ro_ on March 02, 2023

    I used yellow lentils, soaked for a couple of hours, cooked for about an hour and a half in total. Found this dish unremarkable, it was nice enough but nothing more.

• Indian spinach bread (Palak roti)

  • Ro_ on January 02, 2023

    These needed a lot more salt than I added, and came out quite bland. I would possibly repeat, because they looked nice and were easy to make, texture was pretty good too.

• Chicken with spinach (Saag murgh)

  • Ro_ on March 28, 2020

    This turned out well in the end, but I had to tweak a bit to get there. This curry was incredibly bitter, I think partly because of the large amount of spinach and also because the onion/garlic/chilli masala is bizarrely not fried off at the start but added raw into the sauce towards the end (never seen this in a curry recipe before). I ended up adding quite a lot of sugar to offset the bitterness, and plenty of salt as well. The end result looked very sludgily green (maybe more tomatoes next time? Or maybe my conversion of 400g frozen spinach to be equivalent to the 1kg raw spinach in the recipe was off and I should have used less) so I stirred in some yoghurt to help with the texture and pretty it up. In the end, it tasted really nice. I'd possibly make again but with some tweaks.

• Chicken cooked with yoghurt (Murgh ki kadhi)

  • Ro_ on November 30, 2022

    I wasn't a huge fan of this one - didn't love the texture of the whole coriander seeds, and I don't think there was enough yoghurt to justify the name of the dish. The flavour and spicing was nice but not exceptional. Also it's pretty funny that Floyd calls it a mild dish and suggests you might want to serve extra chillies on the side when it already contains both green chillies, red chillies and chilli powder ;-)

• Chicken with tomato gravy (Murgh tikka makhani)

  • Ro_ on December 14, 2022

    I thought this was only OK. It seemed a bit weird boiling the tomatos whole and then blending them: it seems like more flavour could have been achieved by either charring them or chopping and cooking them. I probably wouldn't make this one again.

• Mussels with green masala (Thisra)

  • Ro_ on March 23, 2020

    Best mussel recipe I've tried in a while. The masala gravy was delicious, with lots of interesting, zingy flavours complementing each other really well: the creamy sweetness of the coconut milk, the zingy coriander and mint, the sour tamarind and the depth of the different spices. I used 1 (admittedly strong) red chilli, deseeded, in place of the recommended 5-6 green chillies, and it was plenty spicy enough for my family!

• Rogan josh

  • Ro_ on February 14, 2023

    I made this with stewing veal. It was a tasty and moreish rogan josh which I would make again. I omitted the raw ginger julienne as I don't really care for raw ginger.

• Sweet and sour aubergines (Kathirikai kara kulambu)

  • Ro_ on February 27, 2023

    I couldn't get baby aubergines but really wanted to try this dish, so I used a normal aubergine chunkily sliced. This was delicious! I loved the texture of the aubergines, the sweetness of the coconut, the richness of the onion/tomato gravy and the sour tang of tamarind: a great combination. My only complaint is that 2 tbsp of chilli powder was too much, and covered the other flavours too much. Admittedly I do have very strong chilli powder: next time I would use just a teaspoon or even less.

• Spicy sweetcorn (Makai tamatar nu shak)

  • Acarroll on February 22, 2024

    Dry spices seemed a bit raw and overpowering. Perhaps needed more blooming or more fresh herbs. I did forget to add the cilantro.

• Instant cucumber pickle

  • Ro_ on September 13, 2021

    Tastier than it looks! Actually quite a subtle pickling as there's not that much vinegar. Easy to do, though I take issue with the word "instant" when you have to leave it for 25 hours before eating.