Cooking at Home with Pedatha: Vegetarian Recipes from a Traditional Andhra Kitchen Hardcover – August 15, 2013

Indian cooking has always been a challenge for me- with no training in this cuisine I am especially appreciative when a cookbook has clear and authentic directions. This book feels like I am in the kitchen with an Indian grandmother, learning how to use asafoetida as a spice, building up the flavors in a sambar, understanding the value of using fenugreek leaves, and making unique yet familiar chutneys with ease.I have various other solid Westernized Indian cookbooks, but this is the only one that I feel doesn't take shortcuts with the ingredients or the techniques. That being said, this is most definitely an everyday cooking book- most recipes are 1-2 pages, to the point, and not too involved. However, if you love Indian food as much as I do, the temptation will be to make 4-6 recipes at a time from Pedatha since they are inherently pretty simple recipes. This cookbook may require a (most welcome!) trip to the Indian grocery to pick up a variety of spices and new herbs, but many items are used in multiple recipes, so no ingredients should be wasted. If you are looking to invest some time learning Indian vegetarian home cooking, this book is a must!

I've bought this book at least 5 times from Amazon, to give as a gift to a relative or friend over the years. Not counting my own purchase. Always delivered in good shape. Here are are my thoughts when it comes to the content itself. The food is very specific to the southern part of India, Andhra Pradesh as it used to be called, with a touch of Karnataka as well.Its all vegetarian and if you talk to any one from that part of India right now, they probably wont remember it.It doesn't help that some of the ingredients are not available in some regions of USA.These recipes are for people who want to cook authentic food from this region and can put in the effort to get the ingredients.I highly recommend this book, its a treat.

I was skeptical about the arrival of this book! It took so long probably due to the current situation but I was glad when it finally arrived.Beautiful photography and presentation. 80% of recipes are authentic but I wish Pulusu section had more authentic Andra PUlusu like pacchi pulusu apart from the yogurt based recipes. Also bisibele bath is more Karnataka than Andhra Rice dish and moong daal sweet recipe is more authentic Kerala dish. There are many more Native Andhra Pulusu and sweet recipes and this book only covers a small section of it.

Though most of the recipes are not for faint-hearted (quite laborious since they ususally demand every spice be prepared from scratch), they reward well:) I am from India, but not the part where these cuisines are from. So, I cannot vouch for their authenticity, but I still love most of the dishes, expecially the chutneys. I also like the fact that authors were thoughtful enought to include names of common ingredients in 2-3 languages, along with their photos.

The recipes I've made from this book have turned out wonderfully, and the homemade spice powders (podi) really bring life to any dish I make outside of this book. The one difficulty I've had with this is finding some of the ingredients called for in the recipes, such as fresh fenugreek leaves and some of the more exotic spices (certain barks used as spices in India). And I say this living in proximity to about 10 different Indian grocery stores.

I was suckered by the description "best vegetarian book in the world". That it might be, but the ingredients are in Indian: Brinjal (bharta variety), Bengal gram, Nagasagaralu, Kalllupachi, Maratimoggu, Anaspuvvu, even Jaggery are not something I would recognize, even in an "Eastern" grocery store. A savvy shopper might find them in NYC, but in rural Iowa tit is altogether to much work just to put a meal on the table.

I had high hopes for this cook book. I'm sure if you're a chef, then you'd find this interesting. I'm a very good cook and I was looking for real recipes. These are not really. A lot of beautiful pictures, great explanations on ingredients but not a lot of actual recipes. Most of the recipes are sauce like (and that may be the regional food). I probably will never actually make a recipe out of this cook book. The cook book that was recommended to me (by a southern Indian) is Indian Home Cooking by Suvir Saran and Stephanie Lyness (on Amazon) and that I use and just accommodate for my families dietary needs.

"Cooking at Home with Pedatha" is a Fantastic book on how to cook South Indian food. After having lived in the south for some time, I missed the local cuisine. This is Andhra style, my favorite South Indian style. Now with ingredients found at my local Indian grocer, I'm able to cook the easy to follow recipes to make fantastic, authentic tasting meals with ease.As a bonus - The seller shipped the book much faster than expected as well. Thanks!Recommended. A+