Notes about Recipes in this book

• Tomato, carom and French bean curry (Fansi)

  • Yildiz100 on February 18, 2019

    This was a bit heavy on the carom, which in this quantity was a bit gritty. Good, but really for a carom lover, not sure I am one. I would make again with maybe 1/3 the amount of carom or try a different recipe. Also reduced oil from 125 ml to 75 ml and it was plenty. Could use 60. Also thought it was too heavy on asafoetida. Would use max 1/16 tsp. One last thing-the recipe calls for a huge 2 tsp of salt. I only needed 3/4 of a tsp, so watch out for that!

• Classic Punjabi-style kidney bean curry (Rajma)

  • Yildiz100 on February 20, 2019

    Reduce salt to 3/4 tsp though a bit more may be needed if making ahead and reheating. Reduced oil to 60 ml. Was plenty. Was very good, but the garlic, which was just boiled in the tomato sauce, had that unpleasant half cooked acrid garlic taste reminiscent of dehydrated garlic (I like garlic thoroughly cooked or just raw - in between is unpleasant). Next time add garlic to the onions when they are almost done browning, then add tomatoes. Serving size is large- makes 5 cups.

• Black-eyed bean curry (Chora)

  • Yildiz100 on June 08, 2019

    Good, but very similar in flavor to the rajma, which I like better overall.

• Mashed vegetable curry rolls (Pav bhaji)

  • Yildiz100 on March 29, 2021

    Good but reduce the oil and the butter by half. Needed to add the water a bit earlier than indicated because the potatoes had started sticking.

• Spicy lentil curry (Dhal fry)

  • Yildiz100 on April 04, 2019

    Very nice, but made some adjustments for my taste. Reduced oil from 100 ml to 50. Reduced asafoetida to 1/8th tsp, but I think 1/4 would be ok next time. As always with this book, reduced the salt by more than half. These recipes must have been tested with some super unrefined, more-trace -minerals-than-sodium salt, because the amounts listed are crazy with regular table salt. Note this is soupier than shown in the photo, which imo is a good thing. (I suspect they made it so dry just for appearances sake for the photoshoot.)

  • Victoria_from_London on October 30, 2022

    I agree with Yildiz100, the photo bears little relation to this lovely tarka dal that uses 3 kinds of easy-to-cook lentils. Deeply flavourful; 3 small cloves garlic is plenty for me. The two-stage boiling seems to be to reduce possibility of boiling over as the starch creates lots of bubbles.

• Smoky mashed aubergine curry (Renghan bharta)

  • kkmatti on August 14, 2023

    This was an enjoyable vegetarian curry and a great use for extra eggplant and tomatos I had from my garden. We ate this with basmati rice, chapati, and black daal. Rave reviews all around. I would add more red chili powder next time as the spice level on this was very tame.

• Mashed potato and chilli sandwich (Dabeli)

  • Yildiz100 on October 03, 2021

    Not crazy about this particular seasoning for the potato filling. A bit unbalanced. Try Chetna's next maybe, or use my usual potato masala.

• Vegetable rice with mint masala (Hyderabadi biryani)

  • e_ballad on November 23, 2016

    Liked the biryani, LOVED the mint masala. Really added a boost of flavour.

• Traditional yellow lentil soup (Dhal)

  • Yildiz100 on October 05, 2020

    I reduced the sugar from 60 to 50 grams because I had convenient 50 gram lumps of jaggery. Even with the reduction this was too sweet for me. I am trying to balance the sweet with a bunch more chili powder, but I it isn't quite possible. Next time, I would reduce the jaggery to maybe 20 grams. Otherwise, this is quick, easy, and tasty. One more thing: just pour the tarka into the lentils. No need to make a mess ladling lentils into the tarka.

• Sweet and tangy tamarind chutney (Imli chutney)

  • Yildiz100 on April 07, 2019

    Mixed feelings on this recipe. The final product I eventually got was by far the best imli chutney I have made so far, but it took much more time/effort than the recipe indicated. After the indicated 25 min cooking time, I still had thin tmrnd water w/ dates floating in it. They had not even begun to break down and there was way too much water still in the pan. At about 50 mins and with the help of a potato masher it was approx the right texture. Note that using an immersion blender wasn't an option because this recipe doesn't have you strain the tamarind first. So, after straining the cooked mixture and forcing as many solids as possible through the sieve, the chutney was too thin again and had to be reduced for a few more mins on the stove. While I initially regretted not being able to immersion blend the chutney, I think not doing that is the reason why this one had a better texture (not pastey or gloppy) compared to others.

  • Yildiz100 on April 07, 2019

    Also-thought this was going to be too sweet but actually, it was a bit too tart.