Summertime is the time for reading.

Well, in truth, every season is the time for reading.

In the summer, you can lounge by the pool or loll on a blanket on the beach and devour a good book from behind movie-star sunglasses. Or, you can be like me as a kid, and climb up in a tree and park yourself against a good sturdy branch like a lioness sleeping off a gazelle feast and instead of snoozing, devour books that you hoisted up the tree with a basket-pulley system.

But winter is perfect for reading, too. Long, cold, snowy nights are perfect for curling up on the couch, with a mug of hot mulled cider, wrapped in a soft old quilt, engulfed in a book.

Spring is good, too–you can listen to the patter of gentle spring rain on the windowpane while a book takes your mind on journeys your body likely never will experience.

And then there is autumn–a nice cool crisp morning when the sky is brilliant cerulean and the leaves are a blaze of russet, gold and orange is perfect for sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee and a book to read while listening to the calls of blue jays and mockingbirds.

Of course, all of these idyllic images rely upon the reader having enough time to actually sit down and read–something that I find myself lacking a bit these days, but dammit–I really do intend to read this pile of books.

So, what is in my summer-reading pile?

The titles of interest to foodies (I admit to also having a few psychology texts, parenting tomes, quilting books and books of Fortean interest in my pile, but I am sparing my readers from having to hear about them) are as follows:

Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuschia Dunlop. The truth is, I have had this book forever. Ever since it came out in hardcover, and I have tried to finish it about three times now. (That’s why it is sans dustcover in the photo–Kat long since denuded the book and destroyed the fragile paper, which is a shame because the cover image of the author drinking soup is quite fetching.) And my statement that I have tried to read it three times is really unfair, because it makes it sound like the book is boring, which it most certainly isn’t. Dunlop, the author of two of my favorite Chinese cookbooks ever, is a great writer, and her remembrances of living, working and learning cookery in China are filled with the flavors, sounds and colors of that unfamiliar, but fascinating world. The reasons I haven’t finished it have more to do with me and my lack of focus than they do with Dunlop and her storytelling ability. This time, I swear I will finish it, for real, and then write a right and proper review of it here.

My China: A Feast For All The Senses by Kylie Kwong Yeah, I’ve had this book forever, too. It is a gorgeous, oversized coffee-table tome of a cookbook, and is filled with photographs conveying the sights, sounds and flavors of China as seen through the eyes of Australian chef and restaurateur Kylie Kwong. I have drooled over the pictures and scanned the text, but have I read it or cooked from it? No. A situation I am bound and determined to remedy.

Serve The People: A Stir Fried Journey Through China by Jen Lin-Liu Yes, this is another memoir/travelogue/eatalogue of an individual who goes through China, seeing it through the eyes and stomachs of her people. Do we detect a theme in Barbara’s reading for this season? I think that we do. Right now you must be thinking that I have a one track mind, but that just is not so. As I noted before, I am also reading about child-rearing, quilting and Bigfoot, so you cannot say that I just want to read about other people traveling to China and eating their fool heads off and writing about it and am living vicariously through them. I resemble that comment, thank you very much. No, seriously, this looks like a fun read from a Chinese-American journalist, born of Taiwanese parents who spends years living and working in Beijing and Shanghai, and while there finds a love for Chinese food and culture. What’s not to like, really?

Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States by Andrew Coe This book just came out, but it looks good to me. It is so new that there are no customer reviews for it on Amazon, so I have to admit I bought it just because I have read Coe’s writing in Gastronomica and liked his writing style. That, and I am fascinated with the subject matter, which will most likely include the development of the Chinese restaurant as a mainstay of American food culture–a story which I find endlessly fascinating, in large part because I have spent plenty of time eating and working at such establishments.

The Food and Cooking of South China by Terry Tan I just got this book yesterday, and boy is it a keeper! The photographs are enticing to say the least and there are recipes for delicacies I have never heard of before–including pork and nut dumplings–how can that be bad–and steamed chicken with ginger wine. Again, how can this be bad? Look for a full review with recipe presentations later in this month or next for this book–it is definitely a keeper.

So, there is my foodie reading for the summer.

What books are in your stack of foodie reading for this season? I need to know so I can add even more books to my pile!

This recipe comes from Raghavan Iyer’s sister’s neighbor in Mumbai, and it is a fabulous combination of flavors and aromas. Imagine fresh mint and cilantro, fresh coconut, yogurt and garam masala cooked into a thick yellow-hued curry with sauce that clings to the strips of chicken breast. I did add some whole spices to the cooking oil–cardamom and cinnamon–because I love the way they scent the air when I am cooking.

Iyer says that you can substitute dehydrated (unsweetened) coconut flakes for the fresh coconut, but I thought that this recipe sounded so scrummy that I just had to buy a fresh coconut and take a crack at cracking it, prying the meat from the shell, and grating it.

I have to admit that most of the work of this recipe revolved around the coconut. And let me say right now that just because I was stubborn and went through the time, trouble and effort to play with the fresh coconut doesn’t mean you have to. You can take Iyer’s advice and use dehydrated coconut that has been soaked in water, instead of the freshly grated coconut meat.

Now you are going to want to know how to go about cracking open a coconut. As you can see from the photograph, the process is somewhat violent in nature and definitely messy. Be prepared to get down and dirty with this process. Or, if not dirty, at least, a bit sticky and disheveled.

Also the sound that a coconut shell makes as it cracks is a little bit disturbing if you have a good imagination and have been reading about ancient weapons like war hammers and morning stars. I highly suggest not mixing the reading of the bloodier parts of European history with the work of cracking a coconut. You can do one, or the other, but probably not both.

At least, not without a moment to pause, reflect, and perhaps become a little queasy, especially if you are the squeamish sort.

A lot of folks use a hammer and nail to open a coconut by pounding the nail into the three “eyes” or black indentations on one end of the coconut and whapping at it with the hammer until it cracks. Then, the hard shell can be pried apart by using a screwdriver as a lever or chisel, with the ever present hammer as a means of thwapping, whapping and violent disresembling.

I didn’t do it that way. I couldn’t find a good nail, so I used my nail puller, which has a pointy, beak-like chiselish end made of steel that can stand up the force of a nice big hammer. It is also bigger than a nail, so I figured it would make a nice big crack in the shell. And it did–eventually. Not before I made a lot of a mess and noise, but the coconut eventually succumbed to my superior force and will, and fell apart. After the coconut was pried apart in pieces, then I used a table knife and a bit of swearing and sweating to prise the white meat from the hairy shell, and then–and then–I could finally cut the meat into bits and put it into the Sumeet to be ground finely.

It was a procedure that I would rather not repeat any time in the near future, but I have to say it made a damned fine curry.

One thing about this recipe–in the book the ingredients list looks short, but that is because Iyer refers the cook back to a recipe for hara masala–a blend of cilantro, mint, garlic and ginger. It isn’t a hard recipe–here is how it goes: 1 cup firmly packed fresh cilantro leaves and stems, 1 cup firmly packed mint leaves, 8 medium sized garlic cloves and 1 1/2′ cube fresh ginger, peeled and cut into thin slices. Basically, you just chop this stuff up in a food processor until it makes a brilliant emerald colored, extremely fragrant paste. The chicken curry only requires 1/2 cup of this paste, so you can freeze the rest in an airtight freezer bag to be used later in another recipe.

In this recipe, the hara masala is mixed into well-beaten yogurt and is used as a marinade and also as the basis of the sauce. My one criticism of this curry is the color of the sauce can be a bit odd–the brilliant green yogurt marinade is eventually cooked with tomatoes and turmeric, which results in an odd somewhat greenish-brownish yellow shade that is a little weird. I found that adding just a bit more turmeric helps bring the color of the curry around to a prettier hue.

Really if the worst I can say about this delicious, fragrant curry of tender chicken in a thick, clingy sauce that is what the British would call “very moreish” , is that it has a somewhat funny color–well–then I guess it is pretty exemplary. It is the second recipe I have tried almost completely unaltered, from the book, 600 Curries, and I found that as much as I loved the lamb, I loved the Murghi Hara Masala even more.

I hope that some of you give this recipe a try and let me know what you think of it. And, again, if I were you, I’d take the alternative route and use the dehydrated unsweetened coconut flakes instead of wrestling a fresh coconut all over your kitchen, especially if you have not dealt with one before. The next time I make this curry–and there will be a next time–I will try the dehydrated coconut and see if it makes a curry as tasty as the fresh did.

Murghi Hara Masala
Ingredients:

This recipe makes enough for about six hungry adults, especially if you have lots of side dishes.

When I was a kid, I used to hate peas.

It had to do with eating them from a can–they taste so utterly vile and wretched that way that I cannot blame my younger self for despising them.

And then, even when the peas were fresh or frozen, through most of my childhood, they were overcooked. To this day, I cannot even abide the smell of overcooked peas.

The only way I would eat them when I was a kid was raw, straight from the vine.

Now, of course, that I am an adult and can avoid canned peas and cook whatever wee green legume that comes my way as little as I want to, I adore them. They are sugary sweet and filled with the verdant breath of spring. They pop in your mouth when you bite them, unlike the sad olive drab little canned things that just lay there and squish against your teeth, extruding mushy innards in an unappetizing drizzle of goo.

So, now that I like them, I keep trying to find new ways to prepare them, new dishes to add them to and have found that I particularly love them in curries.

Which is why I chose this curry–Creamy Lamb Curry with Peas as the first recipe to test from 660 Curries.

This is an easy dish, where the lamb is marinated in yogurt mixed with ground chilies, turmeric and a paste made from fresh ginger and garlic for a period of time. Then, onions are cooked in oil, with whole spices, and the lamb is added, marinade and all, to cook until it releases its juices. Then, it braises in its own juice until it is nearly done. Then milk solids or cream are added, along with peas, and the dish is cooked to an intensely flavored, creamy, rich finish.

The original recipe specifies the use of khoya, which is milk solids. It is what you get when you boil milk, stirring the whole time, over medium heat, until all of the water boils away–only the solid fat, protein and sugar are left. Khoya is the basis for the northern Indian milk-fudge sweet called barfi or burfi. It is made from milk solids, sugar and usually ground up nuts and flavorings.

Making khoya is easy, but when I tested this recipe, I didn’t really have the time or inclination to spend a half hour simmering the water out of milk, so I used the author-suggested substitute–heavy cream. The next time I make this recipe, I will make the khoya, photograph the process and post about it, because as he says, khoya is a great way to enrich a creamy sauce without all of the fat of heavy cream.

The only other change made in the ingredients is I added about four cardamom pods, and used more peas–1/2 cup more to be precise. I also used a pressure cooker, because I am impatient. However, I will give the instructions as written by the author for those who do not have a pressure cooker.

One interesting thing I noted about this recipe is that Iyer specifies that the cook use red onions. He seems to specify the use only of red onions in his dishes–he says that in India, red onions are preferred, but I wonder if that is a regional preference on his part. The northern Indian and Pakistani cooks I learned from preferred yellow onions, saying that red onions were too juicy and sweet to cook with. They saved red onions for raw garnish, chutneys and the like, or used them barely cooked for their color, while yellow onions, well browned, contributed the flavor base to the dish.

Khoya Muttar Gosht

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons yogurt (I used strained Greek yogurt)
2 tablespoons fresh ginger ground into a paste
1 tablespoon fresh garlic ground into a paste
2 teaspoons ground Kashmiri chilies (or 1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne and 1 1/2 teaspoons Aleppo pepper flakes ground to a powder)
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 1/2 pounds lamb leg and shoulder meat, fat trimmed and cut into 1″ cubes
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon whole cloves
3 3″ long cinnamon sticks
2 fresh or dried bay leaves
4 green cardamom pods
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced red onion
1/3 cup heavy whipping cream or khoya
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher or coarse sea salt
2 1/2 cups frozen green peas, unthawed
handful roughly chopped cilantro leaves for garnish (optional)

Method

Mix together the yogurt, ginger and garlic pastes, the chilies and turmeric in a medium sized bowl. Add the lamb and toss well to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least thirty minutes to overnight in order to allow the flavors to perfume the meat. Do not leave longer than overnight as the yogurt will tenderize the meat and you do not want the meat overtenderized and mushy.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed dutch oven or soup pot over medium high heat. Add the whole spices, and cook, stirring until they sizzle, crackle and release their fragrance–about thirty seconds. Add the onion and cook until it is softened, stirring constantly. Keep cooking until it lightly browns. Add the meat and the marinade, and cook, stirring, until the meat starts to release its juices. At this point, it is essentially braising in yogurt and its own juices. This will take ten to fifteen minutes. If you use the whole milk solids, add them with 1 cup of water. If you use cream, just pour in the cream and about 1/4 cup of water. Add the salt. Bring to a boil.

Turn heat down and simmer, covered until the lamb is tender–about twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Stir in the peas, cover the pan and turn off heat. Let pan sit covered off heat for five minutes to barely cook the peas–this way they retain their brilliant color.

Serve over rice with a garnish of cilantro leaves if you like.

Why did I pick up 660 Curries, even though I have over thirty or so Indian cookbooks already, many of them outlining various regional cuisines?

I have to admit that I bought it because the author, Raghavan Iyer, a former chef, was named IACP (International Association Culinary Professionals) 2004 Teacher of the Year. IACP’s standards are high for their award recipients, so I was pretty certain that all of the recipes would not only be well-written and tested, there would likely be a wealth of information on ingredients, techniques and the culinary cultures of India.

I was not disappointed.

What I was not expecting was the fun-loving, expansive personality that Iyer’s prose depicted. While the book weighs in at 807 pages and very much looks like a textbook, this is no dry treatise on Indian food. Every chapter is opened with an essay introducing the topic at hand which sparkles with wit and charm. Reading this book provides a glimpse into exactly why Iyer won the honor of being 2004’s Teacher of the Year–classes taught by him must be fun affairs, filled with lots of information, encouragement and exciting new techniques, aromas and flavors, as Iyer channels his knowledge and love of all of the foods of India in a stream of clear instruction to his students.

Let me put it this way–not only was I informed in reading this cookbook, I laughed out loud more than once. Note for example, his introduction for the recipe on page 47 for dahi chaat–crispy shells stuffed with potatoes and chickpeas:

“Here’s the deal with this layered chaat: As soon as they are ready, grab one and pop it in your mouth in one fell swoop. Don’t look at it, don’t admire its beauty, don’t take a bite from it, don’t ponder what’s in it, don’t be afraid that it won’t fit in your dainty little mouth (open wide, and in it with go). Why? Because the moment the sauces start pooling at the bottom of the poori, (which is within seconds), they will soften it and the inner wall will cave in, making for a messy experience….”

Very few cookbooks make me giggle, much less laugh. They may be filled with great instructions, amazing recipes, and exciting narratives, but seldom do they hold any comedic value.

What are the recipes in this book like?

They are an incredibly varied lot–collected from every corner of India, reflecting every regional variation. Chapters are divided into main ingredients for the curries, including appetizer curries, poultry, game & egg curries, beef, lamb & pork curries, fish & seafood curries, paneer curries, legume curries, and vegetable curries, along with chapters on contemporary (or fusion) curries, biryani curries, and curry cohorts–or other dishes to go with the curries. There is also a chapter on spice blends and pastes, and information on the basic flavor components of curries, as well as conversion charts, a glossary of ingredients and mail order sources for spices and legumes.

Just leafing through the book right after it came in the mail, I was astounded at the number of recipes that I had never seen before, and I instantly started planning meals around several truly delicious sounding curries. Even though Iyer has both meat-based and vegetarian curries in his book–the meat recipes do not outweigh the vegetable-based ones, as is the case with many cookbooks that are written with the American or British audience in mind. There are just as many vegetarian curries here as meat curries, and they all sound delectable–I can’t wait to try a great many of them. (Zak quipped when he saw the book, “Oh, look–660 curries–and I bet we will be eating out of that book for the next three years!” Not that he minds–he could just tell by the way my nose sank into the book and refused to surface that I was going to be cooking a great many recipes from it.)

The way the book is put together is also physically attractive–it has 16 full-color pages of sumptuous photographs in the beginning of the book, including one for each chapter. I think that these would have been better if they had been sprinkled throughout the book, but I can also see the wisdom of grouping them together so they can be easily found. The rest of the book is set in three colors with the text in an easily read black font with titles, drop caps and sidebars in a nice-curry red orange. Each recipe title is presented in English surrounded with an orange box in a Hindi-styled English font, with a translation in Hindi beneath in smaller black letters in the same decorative, but still easily read font. Each page is edged on the outer edge with a delicate, lacy decorative border.

Look for recipes I tried out from this book and tested in the next few posts this week and next–this book is so delicious I really wanted to give my readers a taste of it right away.

I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to see that Monisha Bharadwaj’s Indian Spice Kitchen is back in print. It is, quite simply, an indispensable reference work for Westerners who are just beginning to learn how to cook the myriad regional foods of India.

It contains comprehensive listings of all of the major spices, legumes, flours, vegetables, herbs, grains, nuts and cooking fats used in the kitchens of India, with a full two-page description, historical overview and information on how and where to buy these ingredients, along with recipes for each ingredient and many photographs, including close-up identification photographs for each ingredient listed.

It is amazing in its wealth of detail and information, especially considering how very thin it is. It is very concisely, yet clearly written, so what could be a huge, unwieldy, encyclopedic tome which would become a dust collector on a hidden bookshelf somewhere, is instead a handy reference guide made to be whipped out at a moment’s notice for a quick perusal whenever needed.

Bharadwaj’s writing style is breezy and conversational without being silly–reading this book is rather like having her take you on a personal tour of her kitchen cabinets where she pulls out spices, and while describing the details of their history and use, having you smell, touch and taste them. She is just that way–a very approachable author whose work is unpretentious while still being utterly essential.

When I taught my classes in beginning Indian food, and especially my introductory classes in Indian spices, I always brought copies of this book along for my students to buy–at a discount, because I could get them at a quantity discount. Everyone loved it, because they said it was like they could carry me home with them, tucked in their briefcase, just in case they didn’t remember every little thing I said about each spice. It really helped my students and I remember that it really helped me a lot when I was a beginner, overwhelmed and scared to death to even try to cook Indian food beyond the one or two recipes I had dared to try in my youth.

Now, even though I am no longer cowed by Indian recipes, I still refer to Bharadwaj’s book, especially when I see a dal or bean at the Indian market I don’t immediately recognize. That way, I can learn the Hindi and English name of them quickly and easily, as well as see a recipe which uses it as a featured ingredient.

It is one of the best supplements to any Indian cookbook you can have in your kitchen.

If you or anyone you know is passionate about Indian food and cookery, this book would make a perfect Generic Winter Holiday gift. I promise.

And, if you were not aware, a free copy of this book goes to the lucky winner of my A Gift of Indian Spices prize for A Menu For Hope, which is still ongoing for the next several days.