The Road to Vindaloo CURRY COOKS & CURRY BOOKS
number p224; 135 x 188 mm; illustrations; paperback
ISBN 781903 018576 £9.99
Helen Saberi is the
author of Noshe Djan, Afghan Food and Cookery (Prospect Books).
For many years she assisted the late Alan Davidson in the completion of
his Oxford Companion to Food and was co-author in Prospect's
Trifle.
David Burnett is a long-time publisher, having
worked for, among others, Gollancz and Heinemann. Now he runs his own
small firm, Excellent Press, which has lately made a name for itself with
the reissue of the vastly entertaining Countryman's Cooking by W.
E. Fowler.
The authors have combed through much literature to attempt a useful answer. They have collected a host of recipes from the very first curry in an English cookbook (1747) to those we love to cook in the present day.
They have unearthed some interesting characters, from captain White, who developed Selim's authentic curry pastes in Victorian times, the giants of Anglo-Indian housekeeping, Colonel Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert and Flora Annie Street, to little-known gems such as the anonymous Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables (1881).
All these curries from different times and different cultures can be cooked again, following the original instructions here reproduced. And if reading is more your line than cooking, then a feast awaits, as spicy as a Vindaloo, and as fragrant as the stock for Pat Chapman's Balti Chicken and Mushroom.
Review in The Sunday Times Culture Magazine 30.11.08
This charming little historical stocking filler is a collection of obscure British curry recipes from medieval times to now. The authors have unearthed some never-before-published gems. They show that the British love of curry goes back alot further than chicked tikka masala and the text is dotted with well-chosen illustrations such as old labels for "currie paste" or Bombay duck (actually a kind of dried fish and nothing to do with duck).
Review in The Sunday Telegraph 30.11.08 in a separate window
