Beyond Brlliant: Inspired Indian Cooking by Dipna Anand

A departure for the book club, a recipe book.  Dipna's family originally from India via Kenya, ended up in SW London after the exodus from Idi Amin's regime.  Her grandfather and father were restaurateurs, who build their name on good, tasty, Indian cooking.  Dipna, the third generation of chefs was inspired by her father's health condition to change the style of Indian cooking/recipes making them lighter and healthier while keeping the original taste and spice of the dishes.  The prose could have done with some editing, but the recipes themselves were very tasty.  We all made a dish and brought them together for a delicious evening discussing food, flavours, diaspora and what makes a good chef/cook.

Following on from our discussions Cindy found this link:   The Great Indian Kitchen: Serving an unsavoury tale of sexism in the home.

Words used to describe it:  Excellent, encouraging, discovery, educational, brand, delicious

Marks out of 10:  between 8 - 10 so highly marked.

Next Book

Bolder by Carl Honore

Next Meeting

Wednesday 21 July

130 Harbord St meet at 8.15

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Set in Tokyo of the late 1960's this novel follows Toru Watanabe looking back at his college student days and his relationships with two different women.  Naoko, beautiful but emotionally troubled, and the lively and outgoing Midori.  There was an interesting discussion about how books age (this one was written in 1987) and has a detached and juvenile aspect where the sex written about is titillating rather than descriptive.  There is very little Japanese culture although very descriptive.  We on the whole found the book disappointing.

Words used to describe it:  juvenile, of it's time, too wordy, tedious, why, bleak, detached

Marks out of 10:  between 5 - 7

Next Book

Beyond Brilliant by Dipna Anand

Next Meeting

Wednesday 23rd June - 8.00pm

Venue

5 Treadgold St, W11