Cookbook Review: 'Madhur Jaffrey's Instantly Indian Cookbook'

 

Missed the subheading, but it all worked out.

While browsing at the library, a cookbook I'd not yet read caught my eye. Nothing new exactly, but because I know Madhur Jaffrey's quite good at creating them, I took a second look. Her work typically offers informative expertise and thoughtful perspective from a voice in which you can hear the smile. Brevity, however, does not typically make the list, so I checked the unexpectedly slender volume out and brought it home to satisfy my curiosity. Upon closer examination, I realized it was by design. While the title has some ambiguity, the caption beneath marks it as meant for a very targeted audience: it's a 2019 Instant Pot cookbook. At which point I went "Whoops. Hmm..."

Throughout the course of her decades in food, Madhur Jaffrey has remained fairly constant in her message and her method, so this deviation toward a niche, nontraditional (if very useful) tool struck me as a trifle odd and very interesting. While I don't own an Instant Pot myself, I have lived and worked for many years alongside people who do, and was very much intrigued at how a food culture that so enthusiastically embraces the pressure cooker might make a more comprehensive use of what's touted as an all-purpose tool but often relegated to pressing one or two buttons and walking away. 

Amusingly, the book's introduction starts with what's essentially "RTFM"- a person can do so much more when they're using a piece of equipment they actually take the time to understand, and the Instant Pot is no exception. The intro ends with her trademark disarming charm. "Feel easy with the recipes and incorporate them into your lives in ways that best suit you. The foods in this book are very Indian. But you may eat them in as American a way as you like."

Recipes go into exacting but never superfluous detail about Instant Pot minutiae, including settings to use, cooking times, and whether to release pressure naturally or manually- even how long to wait before manually releasing, in some cases. Such fine-tuning tells me a significant amount of work and testing went into the recipes, making me more likely to trust them as written. I particularly like the Rajasthani Gosht (p.104) and the Saag Wali Moong (p.18). Most of the book seems covertly designed for low-budget and batch cooking as well, making the book more more of a draw for its intended audience. In addition, there are a few all-purpose techniques for using the Instant Pot such as boiling eggs, as well as some non-recipes like Rice Noodles (steaming and sautéing store bought Bánh Phở), but the latter feel more like just-in-case measures, and fit in with no fuss.

Most of the proper recipes themselves are both familiar and interesting, and there are a double handful of no-cook salads and chutneys to round things out, accented with pictures that are appetizing and unpretentious. However, the amount of the book that can be readily cooked in a single pan with naught but a little more time had me wondering about their provenance. Is this cookbook merely stocked with recipes taken from others and reworked to fit the mold? Probably. Does it matter? Not really. This book is about delicious food prepared with a specific product, and it delivers as promised. If you want to work backwards and convert the recipes in this book to fit conventional kitchen equipment though, there's nothing difficult about most of the transposing beyond adjusting the cooking times.

Overall, while Instantly Indian feels gimmicky, it does so with clearly defined purpose. It's neatly put together, well researched, and proffers exactly what it claims with enviably detailed precision. While not a book I'd use for its methods, several of its preparations are going to stick around in my head for regular eating. I couldn't ask for anything more from a functional cookbook.