He’s not kidding with that title; Dan Coombs knows his curry and with this book makes cooking up a belter at home easier than ever

Indian restaurant classics are still mightily popular. We may as a nation have grown out of, thankfully, treating curry restaurants as places to sop up the pub lager, but we have never lost our love of the menus.

Yes, you can eat fancy’Indian’ almost anywhere now, and pay prices that would have been unthinkable back in the day, but the desire for a standard Madras or a Tandoori chicken can still strike at any time.

So, this book is perfect, helping us to knock up something almost as good as the’Taj Mahal’ can do in a short order.

The secret is making base curry sauces in bulk, which is what the restaurants do. If you’re going to buy all those spices then it makes sense to make a load of curry base and freeze it in portions. And Dan is not draconian about spices either, he encourages us to use shop bought mixes and pastes. After all, most restaurants do.

He has two recipes for a base curry sauce here, one that takes a fair bit of time and one that’cheats’. So, take your pick.

As to the recipes, well they are all wonderfully attractive. Sections include Starters like a delicious Aloo TikkiChat and that forgotten classic Mulligatawny Soup, through home-style and staff curries of masalas, saags and bhunas, British curries, seafood recipes, vegetarian curries and side dishes, uttapams, idlis and dosas and a section on the tandoor, the grill and the oven.

There are over 100 recipes here and each one a mouth-waterer just to read while the pictures make you come over very hungry indeed. Dan is so experienced a curry cook that his advice is invaluable and helps you achieve great results every time.

What a great guy and what a great book and only £6! A bargain.

{ISBN:1787131289}