Samayal - The Pleasures of South Indian Vegetarian Cooking. Paperback – September 20, 2010

I own several popular books specifically on South Indian Cuisine (Dakshin, Curried Favors, Healthy South Indian Cooking)... While the others are not bad, this is the first book I reach for if I am cooking South Indian food. The recipes use basic indian ingredients (unlike some of the other south indian books - Dakshin is way too elaborate; uses a lot more ingredients for the same recipe); The instructions are easy to follow and the measurements listed generally work fine. The book also has good color photos (but Dakshin's photos are better).My biggest complaint is the lack of detailed organization of the book... There is some organization based on broad, sensible categories (helps me to look for recipes I need). But each of these categories contain tens of recipes and you have to browse through the pages to find what you are looking for. I just noticed a new book by the author that seems to have more detailed table of contents, but I don't own it yet.Also, it would have been nicer had the author devoted a few pages on explaining the basic ingredients. So, if you already don't own an Indian cookbook, you may need to google some of the terms used, but the process is fast and works well. If you need more help in this department, "The Indian Grocery Store Demystified" by Linda Bladholm might be a good place to start. Please note that this book also suffers from some organization problems!In an ideal world, I would have given it four stars for its lack of table of contents and the absence of an index, but the recipes are simply great (and hence, the five stars). I cannot believe that I can make such great "vengaya sambhar" and "tomato rice" among others. In my opinion, the main strength of this book - simplicity without compromising authenticity. Now, if only I could find a similar book for South Indian Non-Veg...

Being a South Indian Brahmin by heritage this is the food I grew up with. For the past 25 years, I have lived in a small semi rural community in Canada away from my fanily and with little contact with people from my sub culture. When my mother passed away a few years ago, I was despondant at the thought that I had lost any chance of learning how to cook the amazing food of my childhood. I then stumbled across this book. It is filled from cover to cover with authentic recipes that are so particular to Tamil, Brahmin sub-culture. One would be hard pressed to find dishs such as Paal Poli and pidi kuzhakattai in the thousands of other Indian cook books which tend to repeat the tired favourites.The author has insisted on maintaining the integrity of not just the ingredients and the cooking methods but also the terminology and the names of the dishes (as opposed to anglicising them for popular appeal). Most Souh Indian dishes are wheat and dairy free making it ideal for those who have intolerences to these foods. I thank Viji Varadarajan from the bottom of my heart for putting this book together and I thank Amazon.com for making it available.

Frankly, I am surprised on the number of high ratings for this book. I have had this book for over a year. It seems that maybe the original version of the book was in Tamil and this is a English translated version. Be what it may be, the overall quality of the english leaves much to be desired. While the book has a extensive List of contents, it is missing an index section.One of the biggest deficiencies of this book is the generally cryptic and often times confusing method of preparations. Even with 15 years of cooking experience in Indian food, it is often difficult to follow her directions. Quantities are vague, steps are missing, cooking times are unspecified, and frankly you are left scratching your head many times. Now I guess people who are already fimiliar with this particular style of regional cooking maybe be better able to decipher the recipes, but I have yet to prepare one satisfying dish from this book. I would not buy this book again, and it is hard to recommend this book in this present form. The recipes may be great, but with such garbled directions it is hard to judge the quality.

I have no doubt that the author is an excellent cook and an excellent cooking instructor (in person). But being an excellent cook and writing an excellent cookbook for the masses are two different things. To me, the difference between an excellent cookbook and a mediocre one is whether the prepared dish tastes like the real thing, if you follow the directions. Ending up with prepared food that doesn't look/taste the way it's supposed to results in a waste of time and money.For example, I tried the Milagai Pachadi on page 95. The recipe says to add one cup of water to 5 chillies (roasted for only 10 seconds per the cookbook), with a few spices and a quarter cup of tamarind pulp, and then to simmer this for "one minute". This is followed by "stir for a few more seconds". Nowhere is there mention of any salt needed (which I added on my own). I ended up with a very watery, tasteless, concoction that doesn't look close to the picture on page 95. After Googling recipes for Milagai Pachadi, I found out that jaggery was an essential missing ingredient. I decided in the end to just throw away this concoction, rather than try to "repair" it with the addition of jaggery and additional cooking time to make it thicker.Based on my experience, I suspect the validity of the numerous 5 star reviews. For my money, I would choose the "Dakshin" and/or "Healthy South Indian Cooking" cookbooks, with which I had much better luck. Both cookbooks have more precise directions, and definitely appear to be consumer tested.