Calcutta Cookbook Paperback – October 14, 2000

This is a timeless cookbook for those who have long since moved beyond Sag Paneer and Samosas. I've always believed we cannot remove any food from its culture, and I found kindred spirit in the Calcutta Cook Book. I had a hard time deciding whether to shelve it with my cookbooks or on my shelf on India, finally deciding on the latter. Practical and altogether usable recipes abound nevertheless.The cookbook could be due, I suppose, for some updating, but this might compromise its deep cultural connections in favour of the tastes of transplants from the West. These days we've become used to beautiful photography. This cookbook has none and I didn't miss it at all.

I'm originally from Calcutta and this book brought back a lot of my childhood memories. Excellent collection of recipes. Note that these are not just Bengali recipes, but recipes of foods that one finds all over Calcutta, such as Tibetan, Anglo-Indian, Muslim/Mughal, Chinese, Bengali, as well as general/ cosmopolitan foods. In addition they also have recipes for Calcutta street foods. If you're from Calcutta and want to recreate the foods of your childhood, this is about as authentic as it gets.

Great home-style recipes along with street foods and different ethnic cuisines popular in Calcutta. I'm yet to try any of the dishes because of how busy I am but I went through it cover to cover in very little time. Great compilation.

Great collection of recipes!

This is one of those rare books that is an enchanting read. The recipes are authentic and in most of the cases captures the essential cooking style of Calcutta, that is slowly losing it's identity among the broad division of North Indian Cooking and South Indian Cooking. Calcutta recipes are different influenced from Parsis to the Malay. Very happy to own this one and would suggest anyone remotely interested in cooking to get it. The recipes are simple and the the book is well written.