The Calcutta Kitchen by Simon Parkes and Udit Sarkhel
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I've just been to Calcutta and back in the pages of Parkes and Sarkhel's new book. The photography alone is enough to entice a bookshop browser into buying this new and much warranted tome on Bengali cooking...
Images representing the culinary life of Calcutta - the markets, the hands-on preparation, the ceremony of presentation are interspersed with dishes that can't fail to tempt.
The staple ingredients of Bengali cuisine - fish, vegetables, panch phoron (a spice blend) and mustard are in abundance. Fish with Mustard Steamed in Banana Leaf (with herring) and Wrapped Parcels of Fish with Mustard and Tamarind (with cod or halibut) are as much a visual feast as a palate pleaser. There are less accessible dishes - not every one has the stomach for Lamb Trotter Broth but these are few and far between and certainly add breadth to this book.
Mild Chicken Curry with Coconut Milk, Masala Prawns and Stir-Fried Chicken with Peppers deliver delicious cuisine to the uninitiated. And there is a wonderful selection of Indian sweets and desserts - the Milk and Ripe Mango Pudding, cardamom-scented Bengali Rice Pudding and Tiny Coconut Dumplings in Sweetened Milk are among the delicacies.
You'll find plenty to cook in this book - curries, chutneys and fragrant desserts - using everyday ingredients, combined simply and to great effect. There's plenty of regional flavour too in beautiful imagery, cultural anecdotes and the odd recipe, tailored to the brave and the interested.
The staple ingredients of Bengali cuisine - fish, vegetables, panch phoron (a spice blend) and mustard are in abundance. Fish with Mustard Steamed in Banana Leaf (with herring) and Wrapped Parcels of Fish with Mustard and Tamarind (with cod or halibut) are as much a visual feast as a palate pleaser. There are less accessible dishes - not every one has the stomach for Lamb Trotter Broth but these are few and far between and certainly add breadth to this book.
Mild Chicken Curry with Coconut Milk, Masala Prawns and Stir-Fried Chicken with Peppers deliver delicious cuisine to the uninitiated. And there is a wonderful selection of Indian sweets and desserts - the Milk and Ripe Mango Pudding, cardamom-scented Bengali Rice Pudding and Tiny Coconut Dumplings in Sweetened Milk are among the delicacies.
You'll find plenty to cook in this book - curries, chutneys and fragrant desserts - using everyday ingredients, combined simply and to great effect. There's plenty of regional flavour too in beautiful imagery, cultural anecdotes and the odd recipe, tailored to the brave and the interested.
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