Just cooked up a rather impromptu Indian dinner for some visiting friends - always fun to spice up the kitchen!  I’ve got three cookbooks on my shelf that I turn to regularly for inspiration on an Indian menu. These were all recommended to me - I hereby pass along my +1 to those recommendations…

The Food of India by Priya Wickramasinghe

My friend and now co-worker Asir introduced this one to me, and I’ve found it to be full of inspiring photos and some great recipes that promise to be above average.  Some of the my favorites of the ones I’ve tried so far:

• Pork Tikka: Tender chunks of pork encrusted with spices and a lot of red onion reduced to a maximally carmelized essence - practically charred.  Apparently a popular street food wrapped in a chapatis, but I just use it as a main course contrasted with a saucier dish and a side of rice.
• Chicken Tikka Masala: Chunks of chicken marinated in a spice yoghurt sauce, then grilled (I have no tandoori oven), then mixed with a smooth creamy sauce based on tomatoes and cream, laced with cardamom, almonds, and spices.  Not too spicey which keeps the rest of the family happy.
• Naan: The best recipe for Naan that I’ve found in terms of duplicating the tandoori effects in a western oven.  Detailed directions for using a regular oven, including putting a pan of water in the bottom to keep the bread soft and moist.

Dakshin: Vegitarian Cuisine from South India by Chandra Padmanabhan

Asir also recommended this one - it is intriguing because it contains many items not found on the average Indian restaurant menu.  Some of these are more challenging in terms of a more exotic mixture of spices.  I also love the frugality of some of the recipes, a few tablespoons of dal can form the basis of a tasty lunch.  These recipes also are very spicy, I usually tone them down quite a bit, and the family still often finds them a bit too much.  This book also requires an extensive spice shelf, which I’ve been cultivating for a while.  Some of my favorites so far:

• Curry Leaf Sambar: I have trouble finding curry leaves in the stores, but Asir provided me some and I immediately made this recipe since it had more curry leaves than any other recipe.  Wow, what a way to discover a rich and complex new ingredient!
• Garlic Rasam: Hard to believe you could make a soup based just on garlic cloves, but this one shows how one can deliver a rich and complex taste with humble ingredients.
• Mixed Vegetable Curd Salad: Looking past that rather unglamorous name, this is essentially a boosted raita - cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, and cilantro mixed with yogurt.  The kicker is a final mix of tempered spices including some whole spices, chana dal and urad dal which gives the smooth cool texture a nutty crunch.
• Instant Mango Pickle: Not pickled at all, but a delicious mix of tempered spices coating a fresh mango (calls for green, but I just use the least ripe I can find).  Takes minutes to make and is a great snack on a tortilla (if you have any leftover naan.)

The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon

This classic (originally published almost 30 years ago) book was one of the first I remember seeing in large format and full of amazing photos.  It has sections covering the cuisine of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines, China, Korea, and Japan.  My mother used this cookbook at home, and I think she gave me a copy after I married.  I already had (good) experience with the Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese sections, but I am discovering gems in the Indian section that show that the breadth should not be interpreted as a lack of depth.  Some favorites:

• Gujarati Potatoes: A great side dish of potato cubes flavored with tamarind, shredded coconut, and spices.
• Saag: I learned (from dining out in London with Asir I think) that the smoothest spinach purees have a secret ingredient - turnips!  I’d made various saag recipes before, even off the internet, but there it was, secret ingredient and all, in Solomon’s book all along.
• Pani Puris: Asir also turned me onto these delightful appetizers - a crisp semolina puff, holed on top with a fork, stuffed with savory chickpeas and spiced potatoes, filled with tamarindy cumin water, and popped whole into the mouth to explode in a crunchy, tangy, taste explosion.  I went searching for a recipe, and Solomon came through with the precise recipe where even Google did not…

Gee, writing this is making me hungry all over again.  I think I’ll raid the refrigerator for leftovers…

California has a new law in effect (starting yesterday) that requires drivers to turn headlights on whenever there is enough precipitation to require windshield wipers.

That sounds like "best practice" material to me, indeed many vendors (e.g. my Chevy truck) already enforce this best practice by turning the headlights on all the time.  What’s strange is that I haven’t heard this practice promoted anywhere (did I just take my drivers test too many years ago?)  I wonder why it was necessary to pass a law?  Is there no other way to promote good safety practices?  Or is this just a knee-jerk reaction to our abnormally long wet season?

In any case, summer is here in force.  By the time it rains again (I’m guessing mid-October), some of us still will not have heard about this law, or forgotten it.  Hope the money goes to schools…