The Cafe Spice Cookbook: 84 Quick and Easy Indian Recipes for Everyday Meals

Nayak (My Indian Kitchen) was a food industry veteran when he met Shushil Malhotra, the founder of Caf%C3%A9 Spice, which has blossomed into a $30 million business supplying supermarkets and retail outlets with ready-to-go Indian food. Here, Nayak shows readers how to create their own versions of Caf%C3%A9 Spice favorites such as potato and pea samosas and chicken tikka masala, as well as Indian-inspired riffs on Western classics like crab cakes and Sloppy Joes. Though his wordy introduction to techniques, tools, and key ingredients may seem daunting to some, readers will find it useful if they're new to Indian cuisine. Once they've got a grasp of key terms and concepts, Nayak moves on to stuffed lamb fritters, a rich cauliflower and curry soup, smoky fire-roasted eggplant, and a home version of tandoori chicken using the oven or grill (as well as some optional red food coloring) to recreate the popular classic. Once readers have stocked their spice racks and assembled a few masalas and chutneys, they'll likely find Nayak's recipes to be straightforward and fairly easy; much of the effort is in assembling the requisite ingredients. Readers well versed in Indian cuisine may find this a little too elementary for their tastes, but novices will likely find this to be a terrifically practical guide to reproducing Indian classics at home. (Apr.)