Book: The Curry Guy

Cooking nothing but Indian food for a whole year. Not just for yourself, but for the entire family. Dan Toombs a.k.a. The Curry Guy took on the challenge – it even became three years – with this cookbook of the same name as the result.

Anyone who has ever been to England knows that you can get saag aloo or an insanely good Indian curry on pretty much every street corner, although they are generally not authentic dishes from Indian or Pakistani cuisine. The recipes have often been adapted to suit the English palate; actually a bit like the Chinese takeaway here in the Netherlands. Not necessarily bad, just different.

The local Indian takeaway

That is precisely the cuisine that family man Dan Toombs wrote a book about. In the nineties, he emigrated from California to England, where he discovered the Indian-English takeaway. He thought it was fantastic, but whenever he cooked Indian food himself, it tasted completely different from the dishes he ordered. Little did he know that the recipes in Indian cookbooks are completely different from what you order from the local Indian takeaway on a lazy afternoon from the comfort of your armchair.

‘Dan goes viral and the public renames him ‘The Curry Guy”

A.k.a. The Curry Guy

To master those specific flavours, Dan decided to cook nothing but Indian food for a whole year. So not from a cookbook, but based on the flavours he knew from English-Indian cuisine. Dan posted the dishes and recipes online, after which he was picked up by various English media outlets. The result: Dan went viral, the public renamed him ‘The Curry Guy’, and his first cookbook became a reality.

Pickles and curries

Over the course of a few years, Dan perfected the art of recreating curries and tandoori dishes. The Curry Guy contains more than one hundred recipes for dishes you will find on the menu of every Indian deli in the UK. From basics such as naan, spice pastes and pickles to curries, vindaloo and butter chicken. And the fried prawns are unbelievably delicious; you absolutely have to make them.

Title: The Curry Guy
Author: Dan Toombs
Publisher: Good Cook
Price: €19,95