I disagree that it's not possible for a book to deliver high quality results. It depends on whether (a) the author really does have great recipes and (b) whether the author is prepared to pass those recipes on, accurately.
I agree.
You can see that from many of the recipes posted on this site. Mostly they're just ingredient lists, they're not recipes, because they don't tell you how to make the dish, merely what ingredients and what quantities of those ingredients go into making it. An ingredient list isn't a recipe and that's why people get such variable results.
How many here really know how to make a simple roux as used in Cajun and Creole cooking? The recipe list is simple - it's equal quantities of fat and flour, but that doesn't tell you how to make it or what different colours there are or what flavours they impart. Likewise a simple bechamel sauce, that's just as simple, it's a roux with warm milk, but making a good bechamel sauce is not easy.
People seem to think all the magic is in the ingredients. It isn't, the ingredient list is the easiest part of the recipe. It's imparting the knowledge and information as to what you do with those ingredients that's the hard part and that's the part so many people either don't bother with or don't explain properly.
I'd actually like to see a book on BIR cookery that focuses almost soley on the cookery techniques in some detail and deliberately only includes a couple of basic recipes to practice those techniques on. Once the fundamental techniques are mastered they can be adapted with equal success to any BIR style recipe you want. But if you can't master or don't understand the basic underlying techniques, it doesn't really matter what recipe you use, it won't be particularly successful.
Topic: unlocking the taste to indian takeaway, ebook out soon. (Read 71344 times)
