Book Review: Vibrant India - Indian Home Cooking with a Brooklyn Twist

Vibrant India  by Chitra Agrawal is a beautiful cookbook that delves into easy Indian homestyle dishes and some contemporary fusion twists.  The author’s recipes are influenced by her family’s beginnings in Southern India and eventually by her life in Brooklyn, NY where she opened the Brooklyn Dehli.

 

The book is filled with vegetarian dishes that cover all aspects of a day’s meals including breakfast, salads, stir fries and curries, rice, soups, stews and lentils, snacks, sweets and homemade pantry items.  The pantry items include a handful of chutney’s and pickles.

The technique and tips section is an enlightening read for those not familiar with Indian cooking.  It provides details about tempering and roasting spices, descriptions of spices and nice informative guide to lentils and beans which play an important role in this book.

The layout of the book is clean and very easy to read with well written, clear instructions.  Most recipes are straightforward but the author does hold your hand through some of the more complex dishes and provides many tips along the way.

I found the meals in the book to be appetizing but as is the problem when adapting a Western diet to dishes from other lands not always substantial enough.  In a true Indian kitchen multiple dishes would be prepared to form a complete meal but I feel like even combining multiple dishes from this book would still not satisfy my family.  

Overall I will use this book more for inspiration than actual cooking.  It is a beautiful book to have around with great pictures.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.