South Indian cookbook

[David J. Braunegg]

A while ago there was a discussion of South Indian food. I made it to
Annapurna again before it closed and I tried Chola's. Now, my
question is, where can I get a cookbook for South Indian food? I
would like to make sambar, rasam, etc. Does anyone have any
suggestions of cookbooks or stores in which to buyt them?

Thanks,
Dave

[Marie Lamb]

There is a book by S. Meenakshi Ammal called "Cook and See" which
although difficult to follow sometimes, is generally considered the
bible of southern Indian cooking. I don't know if you can get
it in this country; I got mine from friends who were in Madras
recently. I also have a book called "A Cook's Tour of South India"
by Vimla Patil, which is pretty decent, and which you could probably
get by special order. I can get the ISBN number if you're interested.
Also, the Indian store on River St. in Central Square sells paperback
cookbooks; I think I saw a south Indian one in the racks.

I have never been there, but someone told me that Asian Books on Arrow St.
in Harvard Square is a good place to find/order books that you can't
get through other stores.

And if you're really desperate, contact me and I can send you Meenakshi
Ammal's tomato rasam recipe. :-)

Marie

[Shari Deiana]

Although this has nothing to do with a "real" cookbook...... :-)

wpi.wpi.edu has a postscript collection of indian recipes compiled by a
grad student, and having tried some of them, I had to recommend it!

It's available through public ftp in pub/recipes. Enjoy!

---
Shari Deiana Open Systems Unix Environment Manager
Department of Computer Science University of Nebraska at Lincoln
Ferguson 17C (402) 472-9477

[Pravin [prah-veen] Kumar]

In article 1gllcp...@life.ai.mit.edu, ma...@ai.mit.edu (Marie Lamb) writes:
> There is a book by S. Meenakshi Ammal called "Cook and See" which
> although difficult to follow sometimes, is generally considered the

^^^^^^^^^

> bible of southern Indian cooking.

[ rest of message deleted ]

That's the understatement of the year. It's obtuse beyond measure.

There are two other books that are pretty good:
o _How to Cook_ (an Indian book)
o Yamuna Devi's _Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian
Cooking_ (or something like that)

Devi's book contains all kinds of Indian recipes (South, North etc.), and nothing
even comes close, in terms of describing the processes and the origin of the
recipes. It's a pleasure to read. It won an award for cookbooks a while back.

Of course, there are drawbacks. The recipes are all very orthodox (Hindu) versions.
None of them contain garlic and onions which are important ingredients. You have to
ignore her references to her guru, which I find very irritating (I think she
is a practicing Hare Krishna-ite), and finally, it is somewhat expensive.

Anyway, it's a huge white book. You can't miss it.

Enjoy,
pk

P.S. Are there any good South Indian restaurants in the Boston area?