The author of this book, Mallika Basu is a food writer and co-founder of SIZL spices, a high quality spice range for home cooks.  Masala is her second cookery book.

The premise for this book was (aside from one section) modern day Indian cookery for busy families.  This means that most of the recipes are fairly quick so if you want to through it together at the end of a long day, you can.  Also, most recipes are healthier by having much less oil and being baked wherever possible.  The problem with speedy Indian food is that by and large Indian dishes improve with time and some of the recipes lacked a little something not having the long marinating times.

There is a whole roast cauliflower recipe that stood out from my first flick through that I still need to make.  Roasted cauliflower is a wonderful thing and covered with spices I can only imagine how amazing it will be.

Cooking wise so far has been a bit hit and miss, the butter chicken had so little spice in that the sauce tasted like a well-known tomato soup and the flatbreads were an epic fail. However last night we made the saffron and turmeric potatoes which turned out really well and tasted delicious even though ours had too much perfume of saffron (my fault for being over generous with it and being unsure quite how to best measure the saffron). I’ve marked up my book and have no doubt they’ll be better next time and the milk (although it seems weird) left a lovely crunch in the potatoes I hadn’t expected.