Essential Kerala Cookbook

Being a malayalali myself (born and raised in South Kerala), I'd recommend this book to anyone looking for authentic home recipes. It explains the subtlety of real home cuisine instead of asking the reader to add all the spices available out there to every single recipe. As of now, I've been able to find all the ingredients that I wanted for this book's recipes easily from my local grocery store in Chicago.If you're interested in the westernized Indian cuisine, this might disappoint you as the overwhelming "curry" flavor is not gonna be in most of the recipes. I wish more people get to appreciate the hundreds of other (and much better, in my opinion) flavors that Kerala cuisine offers with the careful choice of spices in accordance with the main ingredients.

This is the most interesting and most comprehensive of my 4-5 Kerala recipe books. it is not the prettiest - no glossy pictures (it is a standard penguin paperback), and may not be user friendly to some who expect to find all the ingredients in their local supermarket, but if you have a good Indian grocery in your area or are willing go online, you should be able to source the vast majority of what is needed. I will admit to sometimes using reconstituted unsweetened desiccated coconut instead of fresh, for convenience .... The recipes are authentic and in no way compromised for American kitchens. The section on pickles and chutneys is a welcome component, often omitted from other Indian recipe books.

I have gone through and tried almost all recipes and its perfect. It has also bit of history about how the taste and cuisin got developed in kerala and how it was influenced.

Great recipes !

A lot of great recipes I can try befor I visit Kerala Thank you

to the point - newsprint, poor editing, hard-to-read print, and a total absence of pictures make this book worthless!

This book is an depth look at how to cook the various cuisines of Kerala, be it Hindu, Christian or Muslim. All the recipes have techniques explained well. This is a book for a serious cook, not one of the coffee table ones. No offense to any of the authors but I would compare this to Paula Wolferts "Couscous and the other good food from Morocco"

Good book with detailed recipes.

This books is all you need and much much more about the beautiful cuisine of Kerala. It is an accurate and insightful representation of South Indian food and provides a vast array of knowledge on much more than just recipes. I have learnt about the history of food, the religious and cultural influences of Kerala cuisine and am left feeling utter inspired and my excitement for food has been reignited by this book. If I could give 6 stars I would. I am utterly gobsmacked by the low price in comparison to the content quality. This is a must buy for any Indian food fanatic however, for a novice cook, the lingo (Malayalam mostly) can be a little intimidating and the drastic differences between the British favourite North Indian dishes to what is presented in this book definitely needs a build up. However for the right person this book is a must need and is by far one of the best cookbooks I own. I couldn’t praise it highly enough.

All the dishes I had as a child and a lot more. Written in an easy style. As an elderly woman who has spent a lifetime cooking Malayali food, I know that the recipes are authentic. I have tried one or two unfamiliar recipes and they have turned out well.A good resource for the young inexperienced cook and a book to turn to when you cannot quite remember how you made a dish.Thank you to the writer for this compilation.

I like this series very much and it was a real find on amazon. My lovely South Indian neighbour spoils me so much with home cooking that I haven’t yet found occasion to try any recipes but it looks perfectly authentic.

Oh, I had waited for this to arrive and today it did. Immediate disappointment ensued, no pictures. Oh how I wish I’d read the reviews. It will sit on the shelf and eventually get donated to a charity. Shame.

Oh my goodness, the food far exceeded my expectations. Obviously I had to make dishes for which I could find the ingredients, but the recipes are simple and the flavours divine. I made a prawn curry and cabbage with coconut from the book.