I am a big fan of Chandra's other book - Dakshin (the recipes work and production of the book is perfect in every way).
I decided to get her latest book - Simply South. A huge disappointment.
* Pictures of the dishes are totally out of sync with the recipes. There are very few pictures in the first place. If I am going to use a recipe, I want to know how the end result is going to look.
* No index in the back. This is a purely moronic decision. If I have carrots and broccoli in the fridge, I need to look at every page of this book before deciding which recipes are applicable to my situation.
* The recipes are not tagged or sorted together according to region. For example, I cant just find all the Andhra recipes in one shot.
All of these are easy things to do. But they are lacking in this book. I blame it on bad production.
Now, the recipes might actually be authentic, but its too much of a pain to use this book effectively.
My advice would be to buy a copy of "Dakshin" by the same author instead. I have probably purchased more than 10 copies for various friends, co-workers and family. And they all love it. The production of Dakshin is OUTSTANDING and this book is the exact opposite of Dakshin. I dont understand why an author would go backward in the quality of one's book.
