Amma's Cookbook: From Indian Village to Internet Review

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(More customer reviews)This is one of those books, a very rare find, that I'm sure will one day be a collectors item. My friends tell me I have the largest cookbook collections of anyone they know, and I can say that Amma's Cookbook is one of the most remarkable cookbooks I've ever bought.I was lucky to find the book in a bookstore while visiting Sydney, just stumbled across it, it was tucked away behind several other books.
Most the other Indian cookbooks I know feature celebrity chefs who cook for westerners, or who like to play up the exotic side of Indian cooking, their own celebrityhood. You know what I mean. Amma says the food should speak for itself. She was a housewife most her life, then she started a cooking website called Ammas.com. The site is now apparently one of the largest Asian sites on the Internet. Amma means "mother" in many South Asian languages and the woman behind this book seems to have taken on that name herself because most Internet users know her as "Amma" now. I visited the site and couldn't believe my eyes, thousands of recipes, thousands of lifestyle tips, people writing their questions Dear Amma, I love you etc...it's an amazing story! The kind of thing someone like Oprah or some other popular program would pick up if they ever found out about it, or could figure out who Amma really is. Who knows, maybe they will.But my impression is this Amma would prefer to remain anonymous. More power to her!Myself,I want to know more about her because I love her cooking and she's so inspiring, especially her love for motherhood and cooking, and for her own mother who inspired her in life (her mother sounds like a remarkable woman!).
The books gives unique authentic Indian recipes that are NOT on the website, and which are direct from the villages of India. They're translated into western ingredients and cooking methods so western readers can cook the food. Some really incredible dishes, like rabbit curry, crab, lobster, duck, things you won't find in your typical Indian restaurant. I never knew they cooked duck and rabbit in India! The dishes are prepared with an affection, tenderness, mastery of spices and ingredients you won't find with the more popular cookbook authors.
One more great thing about this cookbook is the stories of life in India. Like I said straight out of India, as if you're there! How many westerners get to experience life in an Indian village? This book takes you there.If you buy one cookbook this year, this is the one I recommend. It makes all the other Indian cookbooks seem like cheap entertainment!

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Amma ("mother") is an Indian housewife and grandmother who began posting recipes for her children on the Internet when they moved overseas and missed her cooking.From this simple beginning in 1996, Ammas.com has grown to be the world’s largest and most successful Asian food and lifestyle Web site, audited at more than 2 million hits per month. Demand for a cookbook from site users has led to this superb collection of genuine Indian recipes adapted for international use. These include traditional vegetarian, chicken, lamb, and game dishes, vegetables, dals, rices, breads, and seafood. Let Amma introduce you to crayfish in a creamy curry, stuffed eggplant, golden fried coconut rice, cashew nut curry, and other exquisite new dishes and exotic flavors you can create at home.Recipes are presented in easy-to-follow steps, with explanations of Indian spices, flavorings, and cooking techniques, and every dish is photographed in color. Amma also provides delightful anecdotes of Indian village life, which convey the warmth, love, and traditional values of her upbringing.Not a book for chefs, full of recipes you might find in an Indian restaurant, instead Amma offers recipes for cooks, with food from a mother’s kitchen.A dish I associate with the towering clouds and pounding rain of the monsoon, my mother’s minced lamb curry was unique in our village. All the other women cooked this dish as they would any other meat curry. But Amma added a few eggs, which poached in the heat of the frying pan. The aroma of the lamb would mix with the tenderly cooked eggs. . . . Memory also serves a dab of butter, some yogurt, and a large spoon-ful of lightly cooked vegetables with these monsoon-enriched meals.-from Amma’s CookbookAmma is the pseudonym for a southern Indian housewife who wishes to remain anonymous, but who is known through her Web site to millions.

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