Recipes that require care and attention to detail in preparation and cooking.
They may require some specialist ingredients and some extended preparation times.
Most recipes in this book are of this difficulty.
A family dish from Chennai. Meen kuzhambu gets its flavour from the shallots, tamarind, and tomatoes. It features the taste of the lightly poached fish to perfection. Simple to prepare and cook, this is another dish that must go straight from the pan to the plate.
This is a great prawn curry. Hot and tangy, malabari jinga masala is from the Malabar coast and highlights the sweet flavour of the prawns in a tamarind and tomato gravy.
Masala chai is spiced tea, made with black tea, a mixture of milk and water and slightly sweetened to make the flavours of the spices stand out.
Masala dosa - spiced potato in rice and lentil crepes - are one of life's great joys. Simple, easy and fast, they can be served as a starter, snack, lunch or as a light dinner.
Nimbu pani is the famous, traditional and enormously refreshing lemonade from North India and Pakistan.
These are savoury fried snacks, originating from the south of India. They can be described variously as fritters, cutlets, doughnuts, or dumplings. This recipe for medu vada is our family recipe for a simple lentil-based vada.
Mulligatawny is a filling, lightly spiced soup. It is a feature of Anglo-Indian cuisine, with influences from both the British and the Indian cuisines.
Kukurmutta pulao is a delicate and mildly spiced pulao from Jodhpur, with mint, mushrooms and gentle aromatic spices.
This mix of fives spices, panch phoran, is the taste of Bengal.
Paneer is a fresh white cheese with a crumbly texture. It is made by curdling milk with vinegar. It features extensively in North Indian cuisine.
Spiced paneer, wrapped in an egg-soaked flatbread; possibly the world's best vegetarian snack.
Capsicums filled with a delicately spiced paneer mixture, bharwan simla mirch, are perfect for a vegetable dish on their own, as part of a feast, or as a starter.