Vegetarian Nirvana: A Passage to North Indian Cuisine

Vegetarian Nirvana came about as the result of my effort to create curriculum material for a classes I taught on Indian vegetarian cooking in Bloomington Indiana The accumulation of various and diverse menus is a unique aspect of the book The recipes themselves come from traditional recipes but also from my experimentation in my kitchen over the last 30 years The book has been organized with the idea in mind that a cook who is new to Indian cooking or to cooking in general can still prepare excellent authentic vegetarian Indian food by starting with simple menus and perhaps move on to try more complex menus These recipes really do build on each other and as an individual cook acquires more and more familiarity and skill any recipe in this book should be well within your reach As with any cuisine how much and when to use seasonings and spices is crucial And so it is with Indian cooking Hence the reason for the order of menus from simple to complex As the spices and circumstances in which they are included become more familiar the easier it will be to prepare new dishes that might seem daunting at first For those who enjoy and wish to learn vegetarian and Indian cooking I have written this book in the hope that it will provide the necessary passage to that end