Healthy South Indian Cuisine Hardcover – 29 Oct. 2001

I'm a non-traditional British-born Asian, and whilst I love the food my mum and aunts make, my own versions tend to be 'bastardised', i.e. I used dried, tinned, freeze-dried and pre-prepared stuff. It tastes good enough, but isn't authentic.This book contains recipes from Andhra Pradesh, which is where my great-nan came from, and it was refreshing to see how my mum's everyday cooking relates back to its origins.The book lists the staple 7 spices found in all South Indian cooking, and explains what they are used for and what they impart to a dish. It covers the vegetables and dals, the herbs, the different types of rice, the different types of 'fat' that can be used, and refreshingly, it reassures you that if you can't find a particular ingredient, it can be substituted by another (examples are given), which actually gives the dish your own 'take' on it.I don't eat huge amounts of meat, so it was refreshing to see how varied and quick veggie cooking can be. Also, there's no need for special pans/utensils, everything can be done in a regular non-stick saucepan with a wooden spoon.Meat dishes are included, but the majority of the book is non-meat based. I can highly recommend the Chicken Biriyani, an authentic South Indian dish that has been adapted by 'Indian' (to use the loosely) restaurants in the UK, producing a non-authentic dish that even I wouldn't call Biriyani. My own tip would be not to cook the rice and chicken separately: follow the prep as indicated, but then use a tall, large pot and layer the rice and chicken alternately, using more liquid in step 5, and adding plain yoghurt too, watered down.My favourites were the chutneys, which aren't all cooked. Most have the spices dry-roasted or done in a little bit of oil, but then the fresh raw ingredients are added (tomatoes/chilli/fresh green coriander and onion), and all is popped in a blender. Much tastier and fresher than salsa and done in around 10 minutes.Plenty of soups are included, with 'rason/rasom', my favourite one, which translates as Chilli-Water or Pepper-Water, and is pretty much what the name says, and which I always have when I've got a cold. It's the South Indian chicken soup!.Nothing seems to take very long, and whilst the recipes vary from 'serves 2' to 'serves 8', all can be adjusted to requirements using simple multiples/divisions. Calories and fat content for each recipe are included, and in fact, the only slight irritant to me personally, is that the measurements are given in American 'cup' measurements, which are pretty different to our measuring tools, so if you intend making this your bible, it might be worthwhile investing in a set of cup-measures.Overall, a great book.

Been looking for a cook book like this for a long time. The recipes are easy to follow and makes ordinary vegetables like cabbage and carrot into something wonderful. No oil ladend curries in this book just fresh tasting, mouthwatering dishes.

This book contains an excellent range of authentic South Indian dishes. South Indian food tends, in my experience, to be a lot less oily than North Indian cuisine, and this book is also laden with vegetables and dals so it is very healthy. The recipes are easy to follow and work well. The book looks very basic and home made, and the photography is amateur, but it doesn't matter because the content is good and you can tell that the authors have tried hard.

After watching Alamelu on PBS, I couldn't wait to have her book in hand. She learned how to prepare Indian food after moving to the U.S., so she is careful to explain all the little steps in a genre, and not expect you to have to fill in the blanks. This perspective overcomes a problem with many Indian cookbooks that may address a specific recipe but don't convey the similarities that help the cook to expand their own menus. The sections cover a genre with excellent notes and explanations about other combinations using the same basic technique. In the book and on the shows Alamelu carefully explains spice preparation and combinations. Without this knowledge, usually handed down in the generational kitchen, you will never get the taste right. Her own cross cultural experience makes this a great resource for the American cook. South Indian cooking is very delicious and not as well represented, at least in my region, with restaurants, cookbooks, etc.

OMG I love this book! I literally use it every day for cooking. We are an interracial household, with my husband being from South India- Chennai. I have no one here in the US to help me learn how to cook his favorite meals, which I really wanted to do for him, so this book has been my saving grace. I have fallen in love with the dishes and we are eating S. Indian at least 5 days a week now. Once the pantry and spice rack is stocked, the hard work is over!

The recipes in this book won't produce Indian food like you get in most Indian restaurants. It will be better.To save time and ease preparation, most Indian restaurants use a pre-made master sauce to which they add spices and other ingredients to produce specific dishes. While the result may be tasty, it isn't what you'd be served in an Indian home.With this book you start (more-or-less) from scratch and get the real thing. The result is delicious.Despite the title, I wouldn't call most of the resulting dishes 'healthy'. While they feature the vegetarian cuisine of South India, they also use a lot of clarified butter and other oils.The great bugaboo of learning Indian cooking is the intimidating list of spices you need to do it properly. It's easy to blow $40 or more just on spices in an Indian grocery store to make your first Indian dish. This is true even if you do as the author does and used pre-mixed spice mixtures rather than grinding the spices yourself. However despite the list of ingredients, Indian cooking is not difficult. It is essentially one-pot cooking and if you add the ingredients at the right times, the result is just about guaranteed. Do take the time to read and understand the recipes however. Like a lot of Asian cuisines, things happen fast when you actually start cooking.Is the result worth it? In my opinion Hell yes! Indian cooking is wonderful and this book is a good way to start.

This is a must have book for anyone who has ever had southern Indian cuisine. The recipes are easy to follow and the author gives a thorough list of the spices you will need to cook all the recipes in the book. I became familiar with the author through my local PBS station where her program ran for quite awhile. Now I can cook authentic and classic Indian dishes for my friends that are now Americans that came from south India to begin with. Most of the dishes are vegetarian, All are flavorful. It will bring and element of exotic cuisine to any gathering or any meal. If you know someone who is vegetarian it would make a really wonderful gift.The great thing about these recipes Chicken, seafood and fish could be added to most any of them to complete a meal. The spices are completely adjustable so you can season to taste. Unlike what a lot of people think South Indian Cooking is not spice hot.

Southern Indian food is not what you usual find in an Indian restaurant; typically it's Northern style food, although that is changing rapidly in the US. Instead of drier curries, you might get a cup of a steamed rice and lentil cake drenched in a spicy-hot soupy lentil curry (Idli Sambhar.) Or a donut-like lentil cake called vada. The Southern Indian food is spicy, and there are "wet curries", almost like soups. A lot of the food is lentil based and protein-rich with vegetarian protein and it's absolutely great for vegans.In addition to recipes for idli and vada, there are recipes for rasam. Rasam is an economical soup, that was first made from the liquid skimmed from boiling lentils. It's sour and spicy and very good as a starter. This is an addictive soup--and it's even good in hot weather, when spicy food assists you in sweating to keep cool.There are a lot of recipes in here, including traditional curd rice (rice with yogurt) and the wet curries traditional to the south. There are a few desserts (carrot pudding, vermicelli pudding) and a discussion of Mysore "pulled" coffee--a sort of latte made by pouring coffee and milk between two vessels to froth it up

We use this book at least once a week, if not more. The southern Indian focus means that it is more vegetable-focused than other Indian books we enjoy, and Alamelu's familiarity with American ingredients makes it easy use what we have on hand from our own garden. Other than a few ingredients we keep on hand, like urad dal, this is really food that isn't very different from a lot of southern dishes we enjoy anyway. We've made countless delicious and healthy poriyals, masalas, and sambhars served with adais. I highly recommend you give it a shot.

I bought this for a friend of mine, as I've been bringing various recipes to share when i visit. I've had my copy for several years and had the good fortune to have a visitor from southern India who taught me how to cook southern Indian vegetarian. The only drawback is that I wish they had a real index, rather than sorting things by their menu types. The recipes come out pretty much true to measurements for 4-6 servings, so they're great for freezing or sharing. They also mostly use ingredients you can find at your local health or grocery store. I exchanged chili pods for crushed chilis found at the grocery store, and I bought urad dal at an Indian food store, as that's hard to find except on-line. This is southern Indian cooking, so not a lot of cloves, which is fine with me. The authors stress the exchangeability of ingredients, so you don't have to hunt down some hard-to-find ingredient, i.e., yellow summer squash instead, of or with, zucchini, butternut squash instead of acorn, etc.

Love this book. I am not much of a cook but even I was able to make yummy food with this book.The recipes are easy to follow and they are very delicious. My husband and I love Indian food and were tired of spending so much at the restaurant when we had the "crave" for it. The average trip to the Indian restaurant cost us $40.I was able to spend about $60 at the Indian grocery store and go home with the majority of spices and lentils to make 90% of the recipes in this book. The list provided makes it super easy to get everything you need.Cooking each dish is simple with a little prep time to chop and pre measure what you need. Small prep dishes make this really simple, once all ingredients are chopped and measured it is a matter of getting the ingredients into the pan and 10-20 minutes later you have dinner! Everything we tried so far has been even better the next day. If you like Indian food and are not afraid to cook this book is for you.

I purchased this book for my husband who is not familiar with Indian cooking. He found the book to be easy to understand and well-written. He had a bit of a problem trying to locate a dish when he only knew that he wanted, for example, a "rice and mushroom dish." The several recipes that he has prepared so far have been delicious. The "spices and other basics" list is a neat idea and will be rather handy when we go shopping at the India market.

Healthy and delicious meals are waiting for you when you use these easy recipes. The Indian cooking techniques are different than one usually sees in other cuisines, and make the most of spices and fresh veggies and whole grains. Very easy to learn, and easy to adapt to your own tastes. Be sure and catch Alamelu's cooking lessons on YouTube, too. She is very knowledgeable about nutrition, and not only does she show you how to cook these Indian dishes, but she explains the health benefits of the spices and other ingredients that she uses. I highly recommend this cookbook and hope you will give Indian cuisine a try!

It would be nice if all cook books had a spiral bound spine...so book would lay flat. This was a nice book but the text was to small, the font was so light it was hard to read and it could have used a lot more pictures. Good looking recipies, though.

Always thought Indian cooking would be too difficult to try at home due to the many ingredients that were unfamiliar to me. Saw the author's show on Create TV and decided to give it a try. Have made 5 recipes thus far and they are all wonderful. The book explains the ingredients and how to work with them in an easy to follow manner. Love the fact that the spices are not overwhelmed by heat as has been the case in some Indian style restaurants I have visited. So many new ways to cook vegetables. Couldn't be more pleased.

this is a book for people whoA. Know about Indian cooking and/orB. Am willing to understand a new language.Most of the recipes are written with directions and words that are slightly unconventional to most cooking directions. There is a glossary......which helps to a point, but looking each unfamiliar word up is not easy.

Indian cooking has long interested and intimidated me. The long ingredient lists, unfamiliar terms and use of significant amounts of cooking oil (including ghee) put me off. Healthy South Indian Cooking answered many of my concerns.The authors put you at ease by reminding you that this is cooking, so making a few substitutions are okay and the finished dish will still be good. The spices are manageable even for an amateur like me. Most are familiar and relatively easily obtained at local stores or online. Many of the recipes are stir fries that cook quickly and simply.Most importantly, the finished dishes are really good. Try the pearl onion and tomato sambhar. It's easy and good. The coconut rice is the best.

I really enjoyed this book. The recipes are practical, simple to make and delicious. I also like the PBS series that is on currently where I can see Alamelu preparing and cooking the dishes. I love the fact that she has the calories, fat, protein etc. clearly listed at the end of each recipe. For a dieting person like me this is such a help.