1001 Vada ( Indian Lentil Fritters)

Vada- A Primer
Vadas are deep fried lentil cakes or lentil fritters as they are known in the west.

Lentils are eaten across the world and so varieties of fritters exist in all cultures. In south India, they are normally made from the commonly available Urad dal, Chana dal and tuvar dal.

Batter made from a variety of cereals / flour are also deep fried and called vadas, but in the true sense of the term, Vada denotes only lentil fritters. So despite the name, the famous vada pav of Bombay is actually not a vada. Neither is the Madhur Vada of Karnataka, which is made from rice flour, rava and maida. To qualify as a true vada, the batter should be made from lentils and should be deep fried in oil.

This definition works well for most south Indian Vadas. But Anjali points out that a batter made from rice flour or cereals like millet are deep fried in Konkani coast. So we need a different definition of a Vada for the North. Any takers ?

Any deep fried lentil batter would taste good is the unspoken assumption behind Vadas.

Almost any type of fresh lentils, soaked and ground lentils, or boiled lentils can be used to make vadas. The taste and texture of the vada will vary with the lentil used.

Note that certain lentils (especially red kidney beans/rajma) contain toxins which are destroyed only on cooking. So these beans cannot be soaked, groundup and used for vadas. They need to be soaked, cooked and then used to make vadas.

A properly cooked Vada is not oily or laden with calories. Great vadas are possible only if you understand the the core deep frying principle - Maintain the oil at the right temperature . All tips below aim to keep the oil at the right temperature.

1. Use Peanut oil, sunflower oil or canola oil. These oils can heat up to higher temperatures without smoking - essential for cooking vadas.

2. Choose a deep,heavy skillet. Add enough oil so that it is atleast twice the depth of the food you fry. Using less oil results in its temperature dropping fast when batter is added.

3. Fry at the right temperature. Too high and you burn the batter. Too low and the batter soaks up oil and becomes greasy. If the oil smokes, it is too hot. To check temperature, drop a couple of bits of batter into the oil. At the right temperature, batter sinks a bit, but bobs right up and browns within 45 seconds.If the batter sinks, oil is not hot enough. If it dances on the surface, oil is too hot.

4. Do not overcrowd the oil. Carefully add the batter, leaving lots of space around each piece. Too much food causes oil temperature to drop and makes the food greasy.

5. Cook with fresh oil. Unless filtered and stored well, oil earlier used for deep frying may smoke or infuse a stale flavour to Vadas.

6. Cook with clean oil. After every couple of batches, filter away the particles of batter floating around.

All vadas need to be served hot, with a spicy chutney. Leftover vadas can be soaked in yogurt / rasam and refrigerated. They stay good for a couple of days. Leftover vadas can also be used to cook up Vada Curry - a restaurant innovation designed to use up the leftover Vadas. In this curry, vada is mashed up and simmered in the curry base.

And that's my first submission for Rushina's Pakora contest.

Model Recipes

These are some interesting Vada recipes I came across..

Dhivya's Banana Flower Vada
Anjali's Multigrain Vada
Kurma's Urad dal Vada
Divya's Dosai Mavu Vada - a different twist on the Vada, proving you can deep fry just about any batter and it'll taste good.

1001 South Indian curries- Download ebook

Reaching a million people..
Dinakaran, The top Tamil newspaper selling over a million copies had my interview in its Sunday edition and for the past two days I've been swamped by calls.

It takes a great civilisation to make a great cuisine. With our thousands of year old rich and vibrant culture, it is no wonder we have a rich and diverse cuisine. This book was written chiefly to share the wonder that we take for granted - Our rich South Indian cuisine.

It is humbling to know that South Indian Curries are virtually unknown outside India. It will be a pity if this vast treasure house of South Indian Curries is not shared with the world.

For those who can't wait, I've put up a soft copy online. In case you are unable to download, mail me ( siramki at gmail) and I'll try to send a copy. Click here to download 1001 South Indian Curries ( pdf file : 1 Mb)

/Happy cooking

One Page Cookbooks

One page cookbooks offer a new, easy way to look at cooking.

For the reluctant cook
They are designed for the”don't-wanna-but-gotta-cook" people. No cooking terms are used and no knowledge is assumed on the part of the reader. The presentation is non -threatening. There are no complicated steps, no exact measurements and nothing to memorise.

Learn one recipe – Cook a thousand more
Each recipe is broken into three easy parts- The base, the flavouring and the additives. These are prepared separately, then mixed and cooked together. This way, the chances of going wrong are minimised. Since all recipes follow this exact format, learning one recipe lets one cook thousands of other recipes.

A thousand recipes ?
The table lists recipes starting from 000 to 999 - a total of 1000 recipes. There is a recipe corresponding to each number, and many of them have never been cooked before - you have a chance to invent your own a unique recipe. In fact the table lists not just 1000 recipes, but 9!*9!*9! ( read Nine factorial cubed). You won't run out of recipes anytime soon !

Easy to refer
One page cookbooks are designed for easy reference. Hang it in the kitchen and thousands of recipes are right there, in front of you!

Focus on creativity, not manual skill
The core idea is to encourage creativity by not focusing too much on details or on manual skill. All recipes demanding a good deal of manual skill have been avoided. Only simple, easy to cook recipes are listed.

Cook on the first try
All recipes are designed to be cooked by a novice on the very first try. That said, this cookbook does not promise to create an overnight chef. The chief goal is to keep it simple, which occasionally leads to oversimplification. However I find it useful, when stuck with a cook's eternal question - What do I cook today ? I hope you do too.

1001 Kerala curries

Kerala Curries

Kerala curries are built on Coconut and Yogurt. Unlike North Indian curries, Milk /cream/ nut paste are not used as a curry base. Heavy use of coconut, fish, use of raw curry leaves and raw coconut oil for flavouring, Low use of Tamarind unlike other south Indian cuisines, use of Coconut oil for cooking & use of vegetables like raw banana and raw jackfruit, breadfruit ( kadachakka) are unique to Kerala curries.

0.0.0: Tomato Pulissery

Prepare base as per point 0 & flavouring as per point 0. Add a handful chopped tomato. Cook as per the master recipe.

1.1.1 Olan (Beans and pumpkin in yogurt-coconut curry)
Prepare base as per point 4 & flavouring as per point 1. Add half a handful of raw chopped pumpkin. Cook as per the master recipe.

2.0.0 Pulinkari (Tamarind curry)
Prepare base as per point 5 & flavouring as per point 0. Add a handful of chopped and boiled raw bananas and cook as per the master recipe.

3.8.0 Aviyal (Mixed vegetables in yogurt curry)
Prepare base as per point 3 & flavouring as per point 8. Mix all with half a handful of boiled mixed vegetables. Add half a spoon raw coconut oil and serve. No need to cook any further.

4.0.0 Plantain Erissery (Banana cooked in coconut gravy)
Prepare base as per point 1 & flavouring as per point 0. Add a handful of chopped and boiled raw bananas. Cook as per the master recipe.

5.7.0 Kalan (Yam cooked in Coconut – Onion gravy)
Prepare base as per point 2 and flavouring as per point 0. Add half a handful each of cubed and boiled yam. Cook as per the master recipe.

6.7.2 Keera Mulagootal (Spinach and lentil curry)
Prepare base as per point 6 & flavouring as per point 7. Add a handful of chopped spinach. Cook as per the master recipe.

Cook for a crowd

Cooking for a crowd

Following a few simple steps you can create a meal for may people in under 10 minutes

Step 1: Keep the base cooked and ready.( Rice, pasta, bread or noodles).

Step 2 : For all south Indian dishes, have the boiled tamarind water and boiled tuvaram paruppu ready .

Step 3 : Keep some milk and fresh fruits ready. In a crunch you can atleast serve milkshakes / fresh fruits.

Step 1 :

The base is rice, pasta, noodles or bread. Have it cooked and ready. These can be refrigerated for up to a week. If you are particular about steaming hot rice, just sprinkle some water on rice and microwave it for a minute.

Keep cooked pasta / Noodles ready. You can cook them to a south Indian taste by the following steps.

1. Heat oil. Add some kadugu, ulutham paruppu, vara milagai, perungauam, karuveppilai, onions. Stir fry for a while and mix with pasta or noodles to get a pasta uppuma. Tastes great.

Or if you want them served with a sauce, cook any of the sauces below

1. Add a handful of coconut , seerakam and green chilies. Grind to a paste. Add curd and mix. Add this to pasta.

2. Take any of the readymade soup powders. Mix with water and make a thick soup. Just add to pasta and serve.

Once the base is ready, most of your work is done. Whether it is for 5 people or for 50, just keep the base ready and you are safe. in a crunch, you can serve raw pasta or rice and yogurt.

Step 2 : Cooking Sambar / Rasam /Kulambu

For all south Indian dishes, have the following ready

1. Boiled Tamarind water.

Make a large batch of tamarind water, boil it for 10-15 minutes. refrigerate. Will last for a month.

2. Boiled Tuvaram paruppu

Take a cup or two of Tuvaram paruppu, pressure cook it for 2 whistles with a bit of turmeric and refrigerate. Will last for a week.

Once these are ready in your fridge, you can create dozens of kulambus, sambars or rasams in under five minutes.

Take 6 cups. Put one chopped vegetable into each cup - say Mullangi, Vendakkai, Kudai milagai, Small onions, Brinjal, Pavakkai. Sprinkle some water and microwave everything together for 4 minutes.

Take six more cups.

In cup 1 add some tamarind water, mix a bit of vellam and sambar podi. Add the cooked onions. Microwave for 4 minutes. Venkaya puli kulambu is ready.

In cup 2 add some tamarind water, mix a bit of vellam and sambar podi. Add the cooked kudai milagai. Microwave for 4 minutes. Kudai milagai puli kulambu is ready.

In cup 3 add some tamarind water, add some boiled tuvaram paruppu and sambar podi. Add the cooked brinjal. Microwave for 4 minutes. Brinjal puli sambar is ready.

In cup 4 add add some boiled tuvaram paruppu and sambar podi. Add the cooked brinjal. Microwave for 4 minutes. Brinjal paruppu sambar is ready.

In cup 5 add some boiled tuvaram paruppu and mix it with water to get a thin paruppu thanir. Add a pinch of sambar podi. Add a handful of chopped tomatoes and Microwave for 4 minutes. Add the juice of half a lemon. Lemon rasam is ready.

In cup 6 add some tamarind water, add some boiled tuvaram paruppu and mix with water to get the consistency of rasam. Add a pinch of sambar powder and a pinch of pepper. Microwave for 4 minutes. Milagu rasam is ready.

You can first make six cups and microwave all these together. So in just 5 minutes you have two kulambus, two sambars and two rasams ready. For all these you can use the same garnish. Heat a spoon of oil, add a pinch of kadugu, perungayam, red chillies and karuveppilai. Add to all six cups. Add some fresh kothamalli to all cups and serve.

There you go - 6 dishes in under 10 minutes. Easy ain't it ?

Cooking Chicken :

Spent a week poring over 500 odd chicken recipes. Most of them fall under the Marinate- cook category. The rich variety of marinades and the different cooking methods ( Deep frying/sauteeing, steaming, simmering/Broiling/Poaching/Spit or pot roasting/Grilling/Barbecueing/Stewing) etc makes each dish unique.

A few general comments

1. Chicken flesh can be flattened, and treated like a wrap, with other goodies stuffed into it and cooked.
2. Chicken can be made crunchier by dipping it in flour/batter/ egg/bread crumbs/cornflakes/rava and then deep fried.
3. In an oven chicken is cooked for around 30 mins at around 180 degrees.
4. Chicken can be boiled, shredded and treated like any other vegetable.
5. Simmering in a small amount of liquid makes chicken juicy and tender
6. A combination of cooking methods can add complexity. For example chicken can be first sauteed and then poached. Or chicken can be half fried, marinated and then baked or dry tandoori chicken can be further cooked in a gravy.
7. Chicken can be encased in a variety of batter/dough and then cooked in a variety of ways.
8. While grilling/baking under high heat, chicken dries out and so regular basting with butter/oil/marinade liquid is necessary.
9. Set oven at highest temperature to recreate the dry intense heat of a tandoor. Chicken with high fat content cooks well in a tandoor. Live coals inside a oven also recreates a tandoor.
10. One interesting cooking method is to put marinated chicken in an earthern pot, arranged so that it sits on a bead of sticks, never touching the pot. The pot is covered, sealed with dough and surrounded by lit cowdung/coals for 2 hours.
11. Chicken liver soaked in milk and cooked with roast sesame seeds/Onions/Ginger loses its strong odour.

A variety of chicken recipes follow in the next post...

Demystifying Tamilian Cuisine

Traditional south Indian cooking is built around rice, tamarind and tuvar dal. The cuisine of a region always reflects what is abundantly available in that region. Tamilnadu is rich in paddy fields and the sides of the roads are dotted with tamarind trees. Cheap protein is consumed in the form of Tuvar dal.

The basic meal
The basic meal consists of cooked rice eaten with a variety of gravies built from tamarind/ tuvar dal. Vegetables / meat may be cooked alongwith gravies or served seperately. Unlike pasta/noodles which is premised and served, a part of the cooking takes place on the plate with rice is mixed with various gravies. The meal starts with rice and boiled tuvar dal, then a chunky thick stew (sambar) is served followed by a thin watery sour soup ( rasam). The meal usually ends with cooked rice being eaten with plain yoghurt and a spicy pickle. Dal and rice is accompanied by a spicy pickle or a sour pachadi. Sambar and rice is accompanied by vegetable curries. Rasam and rice is eaten with a crunchy papad.

Flavoring agents
The chief flavoring agents of all gravies are asafoetida, turmeric powder, roast and powdered coriander seeds. Fresh Green Chillies or dried red chillies spice up the dishes. Black mustard seeds shallow fried in sesame oil along with curry leaves is used as a garnish for all gravies and curries.

The gravies are easy to make once we get the basics straight.

The gravy shopping list
With the following stuff ready, you can make dozens of gravies in under an hour.


1. cooked and mashed tuvar dhal,
2. tamarind water ,
3. cury powder/Sambhar powder ( a mixture of roast and ground coriander seeds, fenugreek seeds, red chillies, curry leaves, tuvar dhal )
4. Green chillies,
5. GratedCoconut
6. Some fresh vegetables
7. Some dried vegetables

All gravies can be thickened by adding rice flour dissolved in water. All the gravies can be garnished with shallow fried mustard seeds and curry leaves.You can add a pinch of turmeric powder and asafoetida to all these gravies below. Add salt as desired to all these gravies before adding vegetables, so that the vegetables do not taste bland.

In the recipes below, whereever tamarind water is mentioned, it is made from a lemon sized tamarind ball dissolved in water. Mashed tuvar dal is made from a handful of boiled tuvar dal.

All the gravies below are normally served with rice. However, Rasam makes an excellent soup and can be drank as one. All thick gravies can be served with a variety of pasta or noodles.

The basic gravies

Sambar - A thick chunky lentil sour stew
Tamarind water + mashed tuvar dhal + curry powder >> Boil well, add cut vegetables. Garnish
vegetables normally used : Shallots, tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkin, radish, drumstick, ladies finger, eggplant


Vatral Kulambu - A thick sour tamarind stew
Shallow fry some fenugreek seeds. Add Tamarind water + curry powder >> Boil well, add some jaggery if the sour taste is overpowering and add some sun dried vegetables. Thicken with rice flour.

Vegetables normally used : Sun dried vegetables, sauteed shallots, garlic.

Rasam - A thin watery lentil soup
tamarind water + mashed tuvar dal + curry powder >> boil well. Garnish. Traditionally the only vegetable which can be used in a Rasam is tomato.

Kootu Kulambu- A thick chunky tamarind stew.
Tamarind water +curry powder >> Boil well, add fresh vegetables and boil till they are cooked.
vegetables normally used : Shallots, tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkin, radish, drumstick, ladies finger, eggplant


Arai puli kulambu- A mildly sour tamarind stew.
Same as sambar except that it uses half the tamarind what you use in sambar.
vegetables normally used : Shallots, tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkin, radish, drumstick, ladies finger, eggplant


Poritha Kulambu - A thick and chunky lentil stew
Dissolve Mashed Tuvar dal in water, add roast and ground coconut flakes, cumin, dry red chillies, boil well and add fresh vegetables. Boil till they are cooked. Garnish.
vegetables normally used : Shallots, tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkin, radish, drumstick, ladies finger, eggplant

Pitlai A thick chunky sour stew with coconut flakes.
Tamarind water + mashed tuvar dal >> Boil well. Add roast and ground coriander seeds, channa dal (kadalai paruppu), dried red chillies, urad dal, coconut flakes. Add fresh vegetables. Boil till they are cooked. Garnish.
vegetables normally used : Shallots, tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkin, radish, drumstick, ladies finger, eggplant, bitter gourd

Pachadi- A Sour thin soup.
Boil tamarind water. Add jaggery. Add rice flour to thicken. Add fresh vegetables.Boil till they are cooked. Garnish.
vegetables normally used : Mango

Masiyal/Kotsu - Sour mashed vegetables.
Boil tamarind water. Add curry powder. Add boiled and mashed vegetables. Mix to get a semi solid consistency. Garnish.
vegetables normally used : Spinach, tomatoes, eggplant.


Rasavangi - Sour chunky rich tamarind stew with coconut flakes
Boil tamarind water. Add roast and ground chana dal, urad dal, coriander seeds, dried red chillies, coconut flakes. Add fresh vegetables and raw ground nuts.Boil till they are cooked. Garnish.
vegetables normally used : Eggplant

Kootu - A sour yoghurt based chunky stew
Yoghurt + ground raw coconut + cumin + fresh green chillies paste . Boil well. Add vegetables. You can add boiled chana dal too. Add rice flour paste to thicken. Boil till they are cooked. Garnish.
vegetables normally used : Snake gourd,Bottle gourd,


Yoghurt Sambar A thick chunky yoghurt based lentil stew
Sambar which gets its sour taste from yoghurt, not tamarind.
Prepare sambar as above, but use yoghurt instead of tamarind water.
vegetables normally used : Shallots, tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkin, radish, drumstick, ladies finger, eggplant


More kulambu A sour yoghurt based thin soup
Yoghurt + ground raw coconut + cumin + fresh green chillies mashed in a food proccer to a smooth paste . Add turmeric powder. Add water. Boil well. Add vegetables. Boil till they are cooked. Garnish.
vegetables normally used : Tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkin, drumstick, ladies finger

Thayir pachadi- Yoghurt based semisolid salad.
Finely chop ready to eat vegetables like cucumber, onion, carrot etc. Mix with yoghurt. Garnish.

Aviyal- A rich , thick, chunky yoghurt and coconut based mixed vegetable stew.

Yoghurt + ground paste of Fresh coconut+ raw cumin + fresh green chillies. Add a mixture of fresh vegetable juliennes. Boil well. Garnish with raw coconut oil and cumin seeds+ curry leaves fried in coconut oil.
vegetables normally used : Tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkin, yam, drumstick, carrot, beans, cluster beans.

The No Recipe Cookbook

I have been working on a simple, no-fuss survival level cookbook for the past year. You'll see a chapter from it posted here daily.

On Cooking
"What's really angering about instructions of this sort is that they imply there's only one way to put this rotisserie together -- their way. And that presumption wipes out all the creativity. Actually, there are hundreds of ways to put the rotisserie together and when they make you follow just one way without showing you the overall problem, the instructions become hard to follow in such a way as not to make mistakes. You lose the feeling for the work. And not only that, it's very unlikely that they've told you the best way."

O'Reilly quotes this passage in his blog on the philosophy of open source movement. This fits in well with the philosophy of cookbook that follows.

There is an implicit assumption in many cookbooks that there is just one way to cook a dish - their way. This paint by numbers cooking takes a lot of fun out of cooking . Irrespective of how well written the book is, the isntructions soon become hard to follow and you can't avoid making mistakes. It is also unlikely they have told you the best way !

Have you ever eaten spagetti with yoghurt and tamarind sauce ? Or fish sauteed in honey ? I'm all with you if you shudder , but then I believe I have every right to do so if I want to. I don't want to live up to a chef's version of what I should eat. Nothing pisses me off more than the smug self confident chefs who perform a ritual and expect you to dutifully duplicate it.

I once read about this Soba noodles master who boasts " it takes 20 years to learn to make good Soba noodles" And what's with Soba noodles that it takes more time to learn than deciphering the human genome ? They are nothing but two kinds of flour made into a dough, which is cut into noodles. Thats it.

The 80/20 rule works here , as in most places. 80% of the soba noodle making, or cooking can be learnt very fast and the rest ( getting the texture, flavor, color exactly right ) might take a lifetime. But what the hell is 'exactly right' anyway ? Is Soba noodle making codified in a God given book ? For all you know, some bored Jap peasant might have hit upon the idea of mixing two flours to make noodles when he did not have enough quantity of one. And now it takes 20 years to get it right ! Getting things exactly right is one thing you won't learn here. I believe there are thousands of ways to get things right, and most of them have'nt been invented yet. There is no "exactly right way' to cook a dish. And that's what makes cooking exciting and fun for me.

This book is about breaking away from the cookbook tyranny. To let you cook dishes the way YOU want. To refuse to kow tow to some fancy chef's idea of what a dish should be like.

Come, let us rip cooking apart and see what makes it tick, and learn a few zillion recipes along the way.

I believe stating the problem and letting the reader appreciate it as a problem leads to increased creativity.

Les say the problem is " How to make flour edible" and not how to make 'proper bread'. If the problem is restated this way, the following experiments may occur...

1. You might try eating the flour raw
2. You I might try adding just salt and pepper + water and see if it is more edible now
2. You might experiment with various liquiods for mixing diff kinds of oils, honey, cream, yoghurt etc etc.
3. You might try various cooking methods.. or even try frying or microwaving.

Now each of these steps would give rise to whole new classes of dishes. A majority of them will be inedible, but the process would sure be fun. And you'll know what works and what does not. And the jackpot is you might genuinely hit upon a combination which is lip smacking !


It took me 10 years to realise this. 10 Years of botched dishes, charred pans and lousy dishes. What did I learn ?

Cooking is easy.
Cooking is fun.
Cooking sets you free.
The most important stuff in cooking is your imagination and creativity.
It is possible to learn and remember a few thousand recipes in less than an hour. All it takes is to change the way you look at cooking.


My style of cooking was to keep the recipe book open and try to follow it faithfully. I did not receive much fun from it and had to keep tasting the dishes as they cooked, scared something is about to go drastically wrong. i was never sure of the temperature or the time. I was never sure if I had followed the directions exactly as the cookbook described it.

And coffee table cookbooks with glossy photos of mouth watering photos were the worst as my dishes never turned out the way they appeared in the photos.

Then one day I suddenly had a flash of insight. Immediately after, almost all my dishes turned out edible ( atleast to me !). Cooking suddenly ceased to become a chore and became fun and an enjoyable way to spend time. I could'nt wait for the opportunity to cook for family and friends. And almost overnight, people started seeing me as a good cook. The highest praise came from my 90 year old grandma who claimed I had 'Kaimanam" ( loosely translated as the flavour imparted by the cook) .

From a person who can barely make a decent boiled egg, I suddenly found I was pumped up enough to try my hand at a huge variety of dishes, across cuisines. I started turning them out by the dozen, trying them out on people from different nations. One of my chief pleasures when I travelled abroad was to try out different recipes on my friends from different countries. I've fed quite a few nationalities.. Chinese, Singaporean, Australian, Arab, Indian, Filipino & Japanese, and surprisingly I've had very few disasters. I found that churning up different cuisines is not as difficult as some cookbooks lead you to believe. We south Indians are considered to be very orthodox in what we eat, but I was pleasantly surprised to found my grandma enjoying pizzas and pastas. I'm thrilled by the thought, but for me she never would have dared to taste these dishes in her life.

In these pages I've tried to share my excitement and discoveries with you. This is not a cookbook in the traditional sense. There are no recipes here. All the recipes you turn out might not be edible. Most of the stuff you turn out will not be present in any cookbook on earth. No restaurant on earth would serve many of these stuff. Some of them will be downright horrible and it is possible a few might even make you sick. So why do you need to go on ? Because at the end of it I believe you will feel you have gone beyond trying to faithfully duplicate recipe books. You'll discover your own personal dishes you might never find in any restaurant. You'll have the glow of instinctively knowing the primeval art of cooking and the confidence you have a new survival skill.
Let me summarise what I've learnt….

1. Cooking is simple

2. Cooking is highly personal ( No restaurant can give you exactly what you want.. only you can do that )

3. All the cookbooks in the world do not even comprise the tip of the iceberg. ( Combine the hundreds of varieties of flavourings, seasonings, main ingredients in numerous combinations and the possible reciopes would run into trillions )

4. The names given to styles do not mean much- they are just a convenient form of referring to popular dishes. For example a spicy soup becomes a side dish, all poriyals are nothing but salads, sambar/rasam are nothing but soups)

5.The main ingredient in any cooking is your imagination

6.The biggest block to cooking is thinking you can't do it

7. 90% of all cooking can be learnt in under an hour. Learning the balance would take a lifetime.

Cooking can be thought of as painting. You 'paint' a taste with different ingredients. Various cuisines can be thought of a various styles of paintings.

8. Cooking by recipe books is similar to painting by numbers. Not only does it kill the creative spark, it makes the whole process joyless. Would be a nice idea to write a cookbook which does not talk about 2 tbspoons or 200 gms of something.

9. The more you experiment, the bolder and better you get.

10. There is no difference between vegetarian and non-veg cooking but for the different raw materials used.


In the next couple of pages I'll condense what I've learnt. If it is alien to your way of thinking, and after reading them you feel you still can't cook, I suggest you pass the rest. This book won't help you.

This book won't teach you a single recipe, but would enable you to create thousands of your own recipes. Youa re unlikely to bump into " take two tablespoons of… " or " Bake for 38 minutes at 238 degrees". I would consider it to be a failure on my part if you need to have this book by your side while cooking.

I also won't touch upon the proper way to cut a vegetable or choose a pan or to fillet a fish. Because I don't have a clue. Go to a proper cookbook if that's what you are looking for.