Indian cuisine still sounds exotic to many people and has yet to work its way into American kitchens. Here, Batra (who teaches at the Montana Mercantile Cooking School in L.A.) adapts traditional vegetarian Indian recipes to the American palate, gives separate recipes for sauces and gravies (though they are not part of authentic Indian cuisine), offers dishes inspired by American food (a fruit salad spiced with chat masala and black pepper is surprisingly savory), and assures readers that they do not have to make complete Indian meals in order to enjoy Indian flavors (chutneys, for instance, work well as sandwich relishes). Sample menus offer direction so that even those completely unfamiliar with paneer cheese or cauliflower paranthas can choose dishes that complement rather than compete (always a hazard when working with lots of spices). And she makes sense of the distinctive Indian herbs, spices, and seeds with an extensive guide to their preparation, storage, culinary use, and even possible medicinal effects (e.g., bay leaves are digestive stimulants). Indian cooking can easily become an all-day process if you have to do everything from grinding and roasting masala to creating the proper chutney accompaniments. Batra's careful instructions tell what steps can be done in advance to avoid this problem. Overall, well organized, with only a couple of glitches: Why advise using the mango chutney on chicken in a book purportedly for vegetarians, and why does the sound advice to use gloves when working with hot serrano peppers come pages after their first mention? A mystique breaker.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-02-507675-2
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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