This book is targeted toward northeastern Indian cooking (Bengal and Orissa).

I hate the term "Indian cooking", because there is no such thing, just as there is no such thing as "American cooking": there is southern cooking, Tex-Mex, Hawaiian, Appalachian, New England, and so on. In the same way, there is a wide variety of Indian cooking: southern India, Bengal, Gujarat, Punjab, Kashmir, and so on. A country with 400 languages certainly has a wide variety of cooking styles!

Anyway, I find this book to be absolutely indispensable as a reference, because I've done my own share of Bengali cooking through the years.

However, I have found errors, that only my experience would have recognized. For example, in one dahl recipe, she says that you should "boil the turmeric". You should never, ever boil raw turmeric! Turmeric needs to be fried first! Boiling raw turmeric tastes horrible. If a person new to "Indian cooking" were to follow that recipe, without knowing that the turmeric should be fried first, they will walk away disappointed.

Rule-of-thumb: "non-sweet" spices (like turmeric, cumin, coriander, pepper, asafetida, and so on) should always be fried beforehand. Sweet spices (saffron, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, etc.), as well as herbs, never need to be fried.

This is a in depth, detailed cookbook. It explains the origin of the recipe. I am so impressed with it. All the recipes have so many ingredients, I feel overwhelmed. I am brand new to Indian cooking. Everything sounds so good. If you are already familiar with the ingredients, know where to get it, this is your book. If you are looking for quick and easy, look somewhere else.

This book is well thought out and written beautifully.

As a newbie cook and vegetarian way back in '91, I received this book as a gift and remain so so grateful for it! This book is amazing. I've not only learned how to cook traditional Indian food using this book, I've also learned valuable techniques that apply to all types of cuisine (prepping vegetables and dried beans, for example). If you're looking for a great all-around vegetarin cookbook, this is it!

my parents are indian and i was brought up in the US. i've had some luck cooking my own food, but it ended up always tasting the same. i've loved this book because it has combinations of spices that i would not have though of before, and a lot of vegetable and daal recipes dont require you to have any skill to make them! i've been pretty happy with most of the dishes i've made from this book over the past month or so.

I just purchased this volume for my 21-year-old son at his request. This cookbook has been a standby in our household since he was born. My copy is well worn and full of notes like "fantastic," "quick to fix," "just the right degree of spiciness."
You'll need to stock up on three dozen spices, as there are often more spices in the ingredients list than main ingredients. I'm always surprised at the delicious results. I've never been disappointed in any of the recipes in this 800-page treasury of Indian delights.

`The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking' by Yamuna Devi is an awesome Indian cookbook. Yamuna gives you the history behind the recipe, and her style of writing is extremely interesting, it makes you feel you were there while she tasted the meal for the first time, and decided that the recipe should be in her book! She's extremely knowledgable in Indian cooking although Yamuna Devi is by no means Indian. You would never know that from her knowledge of Indian cookery, and certainly not from her name (she has an Indian name because she changed her name).

Most of her recipes are of North Indian cuisine - which for those who don't know it, is totally different from South Indian cuisine. If you like the spicy curries and other dishes like that, you're a fan on South Indian cuisine. That doesn't mean that you won't like these recipes though, as there's an abundance of South Indian cooking and spicy meals in this cookbook too!

For those who prefer a milder version of Indian cooking, I have good news for you too! This book contains mild recipes too. In fact, in Indian cooking you can change the "hotness" or spiciness of a recipe to suit your tastes.

A word of caution : Traditional Indian cooks (my grandmother included) didn't use oil to excess like many recipes in this book. Grandma used more oil back in the day when it was ok to do so, but as time went by, and my mom told her about the dangers of using too much oil in her food, she cut down on her use of oil. But by no means did she EVER use as much oil and ghee (clarified butter) as some of the recipes in this book call for. It's absolutely ridiculous to use huge amounts of oil when cooking, and I wish Yamuna Devi had improved on that aspect of Indian cooking. Deep frying - if it's done ocassionally, would probably be ok, but even Grandma learned to use alternative methods of cooking, and her food was as delicious as ever!

So, my advice is cut down on the amount of oil these recipes call for, bake or grill whenever possible, and deep fry ocassionally if you want to enjoy a recipe that requires deep frying. Apart from that, enjoy this cookbook because I certainly do!

[Review written Jan 2005]

To put this book in it's proper context within the much larger world of culinary tomes ... Yamuna Devi is to Indian Cuisine what Marcella Hazan is it Classic Italian, and Julia Child is to Americanized classic French.

If you want to own only one book on either Indian or Vegetarian cuisine, this is one of the very best choices available anywhere. It's magnificent.

STRENGTHS:
a) Devi covers her material confidently and expertly, in both breadth and depth, and has won her share of prestigous awards in the process.

b) Devi also includes helpful chapters in the back on things like "A-Z General Info on Ingredients" {no photos, granted, but they're well written}, and a "Glossary of Hindi Culinary Terms" {which include definitions and pronunciation guides}. Good stuff.

c) Plenty of excellent instructional detail - including exhaustive and highly educational headnotes. She goes out of her way to mentor the reader, and I appreciate that beyond words.

NITS:
1) Most importantly, this is a VEGETARIAN tome. Indian cuisine is perhaps the most wonderful, varied, robust, and culinarily sensual of all the cuisines in the world when it comes to vegetarianism ... but meat & seafood curries are also culinary joys not to be overlooked, and omitting them leaves an echoing void that partially undermines the ability of this book to serve as a 'all-in-one' source on Indian Cuisine in general. If you're an omnivore like me, you'll need to supplement this book with at least 2 other books on Indian Cuisine - Northern (for sultry slow-simmered meat curries) and Southern (for hot and spicy fruit, coconut & yogurt themed seafood curries). I should clarify, for the benefit of vegeterian readers, that the authoress's particular brand of vegetarianism is "Vedic" ... grossly oversimplified, that means no meat, poultry, eggs, seafood, onions, shallots, garlic, leeks, mushrooms or vinegar, which is a step further than most vegetarians are used to. Not a complaint - just a factoid for the reader's consideration. Personally, I love onions, and I'd be hard pressed to give them up in a good curry base.

2) No photos, and illustrations are somewhat sparse and are all hand drawn. Such things are an optional luxury anyway, so that's not really a major nit.

3) {deleted}

4) If I recall correctly (and I admit it's been a while since I last read it heavily rather than merely raiding it for the occasional recipe or three), the authoress roams freely between northern and southern indian, without really making an attempt to clearly segregate them by style (which makes it a little harder to search for dishes based on region). Minor nit.

5) I dont mind mixing a little philosophy and religion into discussions about food, but the authoress (who's a Krishna devotee) tends to ramble a bit at times. Anyway, that's a minor nit, and does not detract too much from the culinary majesty of this offering - it's just an observation.

CONCLUSION: This is a magnificent tome, and even though I listed a plethora of relatively minor nits, they're not enough to prevent me from giving this a an enthusiastic endorsement. It's one of the best, and most exhaustive, books on vegetarian cuisine to be found anywhere in the English language.

[Review written Jan 2005]

To put this book in it's proper context within the much larger world of culinary tomes ... Yamuna Devi is to Indian Cuisine what Marcella Hazan is it Classic Italian, and Julia Child is to Americanized classic French.

If you want to own only one book on either Indian or Vegetarian cuisine, this is one of the very best choices available anywhere. It's magnificent.

STRENGTHS:
a) Devi covers her material confidently and expertly, in both breadth and depth, and has won her share of prestigous awards in the process.

b) Devi also includes helpful chapters in the back on things like "A-Z General Info on Ingredients" {no photos, granted, but they're well written}, and a "Glossary of Hindi Culinary Terms" {which include definitions and pronunciation guides}. Good stuff.

c) Plenty of excellent instructional detail - including exhaustive and highly educational headnotes. She goes out of her way to mentor the reader, and I appreciate that beyond words.

NITS:
1) Most importantly, this is a VEGETARIAN tome. Indian cuisine is perhaps the most wonderful, varied, robust, and culinarily sensual of all the cuisines in the world when it comes to vegetarianism ... but meat & seafood curries are also culinary joys not to be overlooked, and omitting them leaves an echoing void that partially undermines the ability of this book to serve as a 'all-in-one' source on Indian Cuisine in general. If you're an omnivore like me, you'll need to supplement this book with at least 2 other books on Indian Cuisine - Northern (for sultry slow-simmered meat curries) and Southern (for hot and spicy fruit, coconut & yogurt themed seafood curries). I should clarify, for the benefit of vegeterian readers, that the authoress's particular brand of vegetarianism is "Vedic" ... grossly oversimplified, that means no meat, poultry, eggs, seafood, onions, shallots, garlic, leeks, mushrooms or vinegar, which is a step further than most vegetarians are used to. Not a complaint - just a factoid for the reader's consideration. Personally, I love onions, and I'd be hard pressed to give them up in a good curry base.

2) No photos, and illustrations are somewhat sparse and are all hand drawn. Such things are an optional luxury anyway, so that's not really a major nit.

3) {deleted}

4) If I recall correctly (and I admit it's been a while since I last read it heavily rather than merely raiding it for the occasional recipe or three), the authoress roams freely between northern and southern indian, without really making an attempt to clearly segregate them by style (which makes it a little harder to search for dishes based on region). Minor nit.

5) The authoress is a follower of Krishna, with all that that entails. Personally, I dont mind mixing a little philosophy and religion into discussions about food, but she tends to ramble a bit at times. Anyway, that's a very minor nit, and does not detract in the slightest from the culinary majesty of this tome - it's just an observation. If, on the otherhand, you're a barefoot pot-smoking commie-sympathizing communal-living vegan space cadet (or moonie) living in the low-rent outskirts Berkeley CA, and habitually make your own naan, dosas and yogurt from scratch, then add 1 points and call this one an 11/10.

CONCLUSION: This is a magnificent tome, and even though I listed a plethora of relatively minor nits, they're not enough to prevent me from giving this book a perfect 10. It's one of the best and most exhaustive books on vegetarian cuisine to be found anywhere in the English language.

The author is amazing! She has spent much of her life mastering the art and science of the Indian Culinary Arts and now is sharing it with the world - her work, passion, and determination is simply admirable! Her inventions and adaptations are strictly vegetarian and Saathwic. The recipes are well laid out and detailed information is given about each of the 500+ recipes. Of course you'll have to thumb through and narrow down on your most favorite recipes to experiment with.. having done that you will find your taste buds mesmerized and your guests impressed with a mild streak of envy :-) "People pleasers", this is your book! The only requisite is that you must really enjoy Indian food and have the time and patience with experimenting. The reward is simply a lifetime of reliable recipes to reference without having to think about them again or hunting for them in mediocre cook books, and online. ...

The recipes in themselves inspires and tickles the chef in us all..

Another good investment! I'm grinning!

This is a huge book! This book covers anything and everything one could ever dream of cooking for a nice vegetarian menu. All instructions and recipies easily laid out for even a beginner cook like myself. Very nice all around. If you eat a balanced diet from the hundreds of recipies inside you won't even miss eating meat. Vedic cooking is divine! Enjoy.

This is a huge book! This book covers anything and everything one could ever dream of cooking for a nice vegetarian menu. All instructions and recipies easily laid out for even a beginner cook like myself. Very nice all around. If you eat a balanced diet from the hundreds of recipies inside you won't even miss eating meat. Vedic cooking is divine! Enjoy.

This is a HUGE book. It has pretty much everything you could want -- both north and south indian vegetarian cooking.

Not only does it have hundreds of recipes, but it's got a wealth of information on technique and the basic ingredients and building blocks of Indian vegetarian cooking.

It even has a simple little experiment you can do with potatoes, using three different general approaches to spicing. After which you will understand, first-hand, how these three approaches change the flavors of the food. There are other, what I would call "cooking lessons" here and there in the book.

The glossary is really an encyclopedia of the basic concepts, ingredients, and procedures in indian vegetarian cooking.

The book is PURE vegetarian without fish or eggs.

This is both the what and how of Indian vegetarian cooking. If you really studied this book you could open a restaurant! Or just use it the way I do, as a reference book for every type of indian vegetarian food.

This is a HUGE book. It has pretty much everything you could want -- both north and south indian vegetarian cooking.

Not only does it have hundreds of recipes, but it's got a wealth of information on technique and the basic ingredients and building blocks of Indian vegetarian cooking.

It even has a simple little experiment you can do with potatoes, using three different general approaches to spicing. After which you will understand, first-hand, how these three approaches change the flavors of the food. There are other, what I would call "cooking lessons" here and there in the book.

The glossary is really an encyclopedia of the basic concepts, ingredients, and procedures in indian vegetarian cooking.

The book is PURE vegetarian without fish or eggs.

This is both the what and how of Indian vegetarian cooking. If you really studied this book you could open a restaurant! Or just use it the way I do, as a reference book for every type of indian vegetarian food.

Yamuna Devi has compiled a treasure trove of excellent vegetarian recipes that are relatively simple to make. My wife got me hooked on this and now I'm a believer. :)

I bought this on the recommendation of a friend of Indian descent whose parents ran an Indian restaurant for many years. He described it as something like "the book" on Indian vegetarian cooking. Granted, he eats according to Vedic principles (no onions, no garlic, etc.), and the cookbook is Vedic, too, but I had already sampled his cooking and it certainly doesn't suffer from these restrictions. I've cooked maybe ten or twelve recipes from the book and they've all been excellent.

I should also add that I was a complete beginner to Indian cooking, and while the many spices can be overwhelming at first, you get accustomed to it quickly and very soon learn to appreciate and enjoy the various spicing procedures. Of course, if you want a five-minute curry, this is not the book for you. But if you're willing to put in a small amount of time and effort, working with this book will give you the genuine article.

As a cookbook, it's excellent, and it's THE best Indian cookbook I've ever seen. So why only four stars? It's also one of the most sloppily produced books I've ever seen: rife with spelling errors and typos. Still, for the food, it's indispensable.

This is truly the sourcebook of Indian Vegetarian cooking. Author must have spent enormous amount of time perfecting the recipes. We have tried many and found them to be very easy to follow and results to be very sunptuous. It is not easy for me to be pleased by ordinary recipes as I was born in Bombay and lived there for first 25 years of my life. In Bombay, one is exposed to all regional Indian cooking and recipes, both at various homes and many, many restaurants in the city. This book has that authentic aroma and ring of Indian kitchens and Indian pots and pans. Author is smart enough to guide foreigners through complicated Indian cooking procedures and make them easy to follow. Her mastery and extent of recipes is extraordinary. Highly recommended.

I love this book. I've had it for several years and had to add my two cents here. Its indispensable... and though very flavorful, relatively simple. Recipes are elegant and quite easy to vegan-ize, which I do whenever a recipe calls for dairy. My favorite recipe: Coconut milk corn soup with bell peppers. The eyes of those I make this soup for usually pop right out of their heads after the first taste. Its remarkable.

`The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking' by Yamuna Devi can be placed among those great expositions in English of national cuisines such as Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking', Marcella Hazan's `Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking', Diane Kochilas' `The Glorious Food of Greece' or Mimi Sheraton's `The German Cookbook'. And, this book has an IACP Cookbook of the Year award to prove this fact. This book even exceeds the ambitions of the books by Kochilas and Sheraton in that while these authors do an excellent job of surveying the entire national cuisine from either a serving or geographical point of view, they do little to analyze their cuisines in the way Nancy Harmon Jenkins dissects and builds a picture of the Mediterranean cuisines in `The Essential Mediterranean'. Ms. Devi does this and more.

In fact, as big as this book is, it does itself and its readers a service by covering only the Hindu vegetarian cuisines, without touching on the cuisines of India which allow eating meat, primarily lamb and goat. Even more specifically, the author is specifically dedicated to that part of the Hindu religion that embraces Krishna. I will not touch on that aspect of the book except to point out that this means there are areas of Indian and Pakistani cuisines that this book does not cover. For those, the first stop is obviously the books of Madhur Jaffrey who, in her `Indian Cooking' does cover many meat dishes with lamb and goat.

Indian vegetarianism as presented by Ms. Devi in this book is relative broad in that it allows both milk and eggs. So, while `vegetarianism' allows much more than a diet of vegetables, grains, and beans, Ms. Devi treats vegetable cookery with a depth I have not seen in any book except James Peterson's book, `Vegetables'. Ms. Devi presents three basically different ways of cooking the same vegetable and suggests that these three methods may be applied to every different type of vegetable. The first method is Sauteeing and Braising Dry Vegetables (cooked entirely in oil. No water.) I believe this is what the French would call a vegetable comfit. The second method is to saute in oil followed by a braise in water based broth. This is closer to what a western cook would call a braise. The third method precooks the vegetable in water and finishes it with high heat in oil (ghee) or highly flavored sauce or broth. Pairing them up with a choice of several different seasoning mixes permutes these three methods. The author sets off with this introduction to discuss the various different types of vegetables and how the various methods can be applied to each vegetable.

Most of this is not too different from what you can get from a close reading of Marcella Hazan's books. The Indian way with milk and yogurt is an entirely different matter. The Indian traditions with milk products seem to be about 180 degrees away from the European traditions involving aged cheeses. The only point of similarity between Indian yogurt and Western European traditions are with the Italian ricotta and the Spanish queso fresca. Even contemporary American yogurt is not the same material as traditional Indian yogurt. While much western yogurt is made with skim or reconstituted dry milk, Indian yogurt is made from fresh whole milk. From yogurt, the Indians derive a fresh cheese and a curd that serves the same purpose as the Far Eastern tofu.

As with milk, the Indian approach to bread is just about as different from the western European tradition as you can imagine. It would be fascinating to read an analysis of the differences between, say Italian and Indian bread making traditions. The two biggest differences is that while the Italian tradition requires yeast and a hearth, the Indian tradition uses no yeast and does almost all baking on a griddle to produce a wide variety of flatbreads. Thus it is quite odd to find that while the Italian tradition does include a version of the French crepe, there is not a very big niche for pancakes, but the Indian cuisine seems to outdo even the wide range of American variations on the pancake / flapjack / hoecake / Johnny cake genre.

While the French may have exhausted most of what can be done with their superb, high fat Normandy butter in their rich cuisine, the Indians may just have outdone them by a bit when it comes to using butter, in the form of ghee as a cooking medium. While the French are satisfied with simply clarifying butter, the Indians take this process one step further and cook the clarified butter to a nut brown color which can be stored at room temperature. One implication of the central role of ghee in Indian cooking is that if one wishes to embrace Indian cooking fully, one needs to be prepared to embrace the use of saturated butter fats, which from a purely nutritional point of view may bring back to your diet the saturated animal fats you are avoiding by not eating meat.

The two greatest contributions to British cuisine from the Indian subcontinent are curries and chutneys. This, this book includes an entire chapter to chutneys, which may be made from either fresh or cooked ingredients. My biggest surprises were to find peanuts and cashews in chutney recipes in addition to the expected fruits and spices. In addition to chutneys, there is also a sizable chapter on related pickles, jams, sauces, and gravies. Oddly, there is no chapter on curries or even on the subject of garum masala. There is a brief article on garum masala in the superb appendix, `A-Z General Information', but no in depth discussion of Indian spice culture.

If you take on this book, it will probably be wise to find a good Indian or Pakistani grocery for some of the less common ingredients and to have someone with whom to ask advice on techniques and equipment.

This is definitely the bible of Indian vegetarian cooking. Dairy products are used so if you want to make them vegan they'll need adjustments. I wouldn't recommend this cookbook to the light hearted cook. The recipes are excellent, even telling things like the color that something should turn while browning, but they are a bit more complex than the average cookbook. Definitely authentic so this is great for anyone who appreciates and enjoys the real flavors sand methods of Indian cooking. This cookbook also won the IACP award for cookbook of the year.

I have worn out this cookbook! I absolutely love it! I learned how to make ghee, parathas, curry powder, garam masala, paneer, chipatees and indian fudge (burfi).

It has many delicious recipes. Everything from rice to beens to koftas! Wonderful! I've only come across a couple that were bland for my taste. By far one of the best books on Indian cooking there is. My copy is worn and dirty. I only wish they would have made it spiral bound instead with coated pages.