One Spice, Two Spice

Description

Add a taste of India into traditional American meals with this heady fusion of East and West

Once hard to come by, exotic spices such as cumin, coriander, and curry are now available in local supermarkets. In this inspiring cookbook, Floyd Cardoz demystifies these ingredients and shows home cooks how to incorporate them into everyday meals, with minimal effort and spectacular results.

The first cookbook to combine the exotic eastern spices with traditional American dishes, One Spice, Two Spice is an approachable collection of recipes that show cooks how to add extra flavor and gourmet appeal to any dish. Combe coriander, fenugreek, and tamarind with roast chicken, grilled steak, and mashed potatoes. The result, a wonderful fusion of flavors that will leave them hungry for more. In the New York Times, Ruth Reichl glowingly described Floyd Cardoz’s cooking at his famed eatery, Tabla, as &#8220American food viewed through a kaleidoscope of Indian spices.&#8221 Now, with One Spice, Two Spice everyone can bring a sensational taste of India home.

Floyd Cardoz, chef and co-owner of New York City’s Tabla restaurant, is one of the most exciting innovators working behind a stove today. And now, for the first time, he shares the extraordinary recipes that have established his reputation. In them Cardoz is able to make the quantum leap between the American palate and his taste memories—the food of his childhood in Bombay and Goa. The collection, One Spice, Two Spice, is an amalgam of two cuisines by a man who has mastered the flavors of each.

This volume of more than 140 recipes is a gift to all home cooks who enjoy the flavors of India but are intimidated by the unusual and numerous spices required to prepare these dishes. Here, Cardoz renders those spices user friendly in a down-to-earth primer and glossary. Then, in the recipe notes, he shows you how to easily integrate these new flavors into everyday meals and dinner-party fare. The techniques—sautéing, panfrying, braising, poaching, and roasting—are not new. The results, however, are astonishing.

Imagine crisp panfried black pepper shrimp, meaty sea scallops seared and served in a satiny sweet-sour glaze, asparagus and morels sautéed in a spicy blend of shallot, ginger, and chile—all of which can be made in no time flat. Other recipes—steak rubbed with crushed peppercorns and coriander, cumin, and mustard seeds, duck bathed in an aromatic orange curry, lamb meatballs filled with an herbaceous combination of fresh figs, cilantro, and mint and then napped with a lush, lustrous green sauce—may require more marinating or cooking time, but the trade-off is Cardoz’s three-star-restaurant cooking at home.

One Spice, Two Spice is more than a cookbook. It is a gateway to a different way of thinking about the food on your plate, and it brings Indian flavors into the modern American repetoire.

“Recipes reflect Cardoz’s inimitable combinations…yet most are surprisingly uncomplicated with accessible ingredients.” “Strongly recommended for most collections.”

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