Pure and Simple: Homemade Indian Vegetarian Cuisine [Hardcover]

My husband gave me four different Indian cookbooks (The Spice Box: A Vegetarian Indian Cookbook (Vegetarian Cooking), From Mom With Love . . .: A Complete Guide to Indian Cooking and Entertaining, The Everything Indian Cookbook: 300 Tantalizing Recipes--From Sizzling Tandoori Chicken to Fiery Lamb Vindaloo (Everything: Cooking)) for Christmas this past year and have been making Indian food regularly since then. This cookbook is beautifully laid out with step by step pictures for each recipe. A lot of the dishes are new to me, seeing a picture of the end product is extremely helpful. The beginning of the book offers plenty of information for novice Indian cooks. I particularly liked the Goodness of Legumes section because I wasn't familiar with all the different lentils and their names. It was easy ordering them when I had both the common English name as well as the Indian name. My only complaint of the book is that the dal dishes (plus potatoes, green bananas,etc) are cooked in a pressure cooker which I don't have. So, I have to cook by trial and error on the stove top until I get one.
Here are some of the recipes I've made and how I feel about the end product:
Cabbage and Peas: I needed to use up some left over cabbage and tried this dish. It wasn't full of flavor which disappointed me but not bad as a side dish (but it is considered a main dish)
Gram Flour Coated Zucchini: this dish looks great in the picture but mine turned out nothing like it. I went back over the ingredient list and made sure I followed it to the letter, but mine was over spiced. The 1 tsp chili powder was obviously too much and not included in the dish that was pictured!
Spicy Chickpeas: we love this dish at a nearby Indian restaurant so I tried this recipe. It was a little too tangy for us but still pretty good.
Flaky Mint Bread: my favorite bread so far! A bit of work but worth it.
Spicy Indian bread: again, a lot of hands on work but the end product is delicious!
Carom Spiced Puffs: a little disappointed. Mine didn't puff up like the picture (some puffed a little some not at all) and the picture looks like white flour was used rather than wheat (which is called for). Otherwise, the taste was ok but I don't think I'll be making it again.
Liquid Yogurt Salad: my favorite raita! Easy to make and goes great with any spicy dish.

Some recipes are work intensive and others that can be put together with little effort. Some recipes call for ingredients that may be hard or next to impossible to acquire but most can be purchased from your local store or Asian market. This Indian cookbook is my best looking cookbook and I'm always looking through it. But my best dishes haven't come from this book.

I have been cooking Indian food for years. However, Pure and Simple recipes make the same dishes taste better. There is something about the proportion of the ingredients that gives dishes distinct flavors. The book guides me through cooking new, simple and fun dishes with the ingredients already in the house.

I find myself using the book a lot because for a working mom like me step by step direction are easy to follow and most of the dishes require minimum preparation time.

I am happy that a friend in Boston introduced me to this book recently- I am a strict vegetarian and do enjoy cooking as well. I must say that this is the best book for the Indian cooking I have seen so far- in terms of illustrations, simplified cooking methods and the overall presentation. I have been searching for a number of recipes and some fine details which I finally found in this book. It has enough info for a novice and also for the experienced cooks who like to try out things in a different way (e.g. cooking potato subzi with different spices). This book will be very helpful for people like us who live out of India and have to depend on a few vegetables most of the year and now I have a feeling that one can do wonders with whatever vegetables are available. Kudos to Mrs. Mittal for writing such an excellent book.

However, I like to make a small suggestion- please provide cross reference (by page no.) to something which is served with a dish (e.g. chole bhature, idli with coconut chutney) etc.
Thank you.