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

by Hari Nayak, Jack Turkel (Photographer)

Overview

This easy-to-follow Indian cookbook allows home chefs to recreate their favorite dishes with delicious results.

The Cafe Spice Cookbook presents delicious Indian recipes featuring all-natural ingredients that enable one to create delicious meals in minutes. It is inspired by the Cafe Spice line of "grab n' go" Indian meals found in Whole Foods and Costco, and now on college campuses across the U.S.A.

This Indian cooking book provides you with all the instructions you'll need to prepare healthy Indian food anywhere and anytime, using ingredients available at any supermarket or health food store. Tempting offerings like Chicken Tikka Masala and Shrimp & Mango Curry will thrill your friends and delight your family.

Favorite Indian recipes include:

• Shrimp Stuffed Pappadum
• Chickpea Curry with Sweet Potato
• Okra Masala
• Paneer with Creamed Spinach
• Lobster Khadai
• Tandoori Spiced Roasted Chicken
• Pork Vindaloo
• Tomato and Curry Leaf Quinoa
• Naan Bread
• Milk Dumplings in Saffron Syrup
• And much more!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804853477
Publisher:	Tuttle Publishing
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Hari Nayak is part of the creative new generation of chefs from Asia. As a young boy, he watched his grandmother grind fresh spices in the traditional stone mortar, and heard the splutter of curry leaves being thrown into hot oil, and knew that being around good food was what he wanted to do, always. Hari is known for his simple approach to food, staying true to the core Indian values of the dishes he creates. His inspiration, apart from his village upbringing, lies in an ability to absorb influences from other cultures and cuisines that he has experienced in traveling the globe. Since graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Hari has worked in the food industry for more than 15 years—including stints at renowned New York restaurants like Aquavit and Daniel. His other cookbooks include Modern Indian Cooking and My Indian Kitchen. Hari lives in New Jersey and appreciates everything that cooking has brought to him.

Jack Turkel has been a professional photographer for more than thirty-five years. From the space shuttle and mountain tops to the uniqueness of his photographs of the everyday, his creative eye has expertly captured an impressive list of subjects and settings. He did the photography for both My Indian Kitchen and Easy Indian Cooking. He is now focusing his experience on the art of food photography and styling.

Editorial Reviews

05/25/2015
Nayak (My Indian Kitchen) was a food industry veteran when he met Shushil Malhotra, the founder of Café 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 Café 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.)

Publishers Weekly

"After graduating from the CIA, the chef started to develop a new Indian food brand created specifically for the American market. There are many signature dishes from the chef including his own brand of chutneys and spice rubs in this cookbook. Most of the recipes in the book use simple Indian cooking methods and ingredients. It has a detailed explanation of Indian cooking techniques, basic tips and a list of various spices which are predominantly used in Indian cooking." —Lite Bites blog

"Armed with his short introduction to a few simple traditional Indian cooking techniques, ingredients, and preparation of basic spice blends, it is easy to replicate these tasty Indian dishes in short order. Ready, set, naan." — Foreword Magazine

"Trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and veteran cook at Swedish and French Manhattan restaurants, Nayak yearns to make Indian cuisine a more everyday option for American home cooks. […] He recommends equipment to optimize kitchen efficiency, and he offers more readily available substitutions wherever practical, carefully avoiding superfluous detail that might unnecessarily inhibit beginners. Recipes similarly shun complication. In so immense and diverse a land as India, regional variations occur, and Nayak includes some lesser-known traditions such as the cooking of Goa, where colonial heritage welcomes foods that are taboo in other parts of the nation." — Booklist

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