Authors: Iqbal Wahhab & Vivek Singh

Published by: Absolute Press.

Rating:

The Cinnamon Club in Westminster has now been serving the finest of Indian food for over a decade; this cookery book bring some of the fine dishes they have to offer within your reach as well as a whole host more – totalling over 130 in all.

The front of the book sets the tone nicely, a luscious, deep and rich purple that isn’t over the top. The book has a great balance to it, the introduction provides you with 15 pages or so of the authors’ thoughts on food, the origins of the restaurant and the origins of the cooking before getting into a well sectioned book.

Throughout the book is very well set out; easy to read and colourful – there are even wine suggestions for each dish. The pictures also certainly add to the warmth of the book. I cannot remember the last time that I had my first flick through a cookbook and wanted to immediately go to the kitchen to try so many of the dishes.

With food looking this good and with its Eastern roots I feared that it might ask for too many ingredients that would be a pain to source – this is not the case. Where items might be difficult to source then alternatives are often listed. The descriptions, m easurements and actions are clearly laid out and easy to follow. The home-smoked lamb kebabs, the tandoori style chicken thighs, mussels in tomato and curry leaf broth and steamed halibut in banana leaf have all been excellent when I have tried them and generally turned out like the picture.

This really is a fantastic book and one I will return to over and over again. Madhur Jaffrey has produced some of the finest books on how to make the Indian basics well, this book however seems to take it to another level and I could make 5 dishes from here in the time that it seems to take me when using other books – the results really are sensational. Definitely a good book for the shelf.