NurseBobbi's Profile

From: Springfield, VA USA

Joined: November 24th, 2011

Favorite cookbook: The Peaceful Palate

Favorite recipe: My mom's sour cherry pie

Website:
nursebobbi.net


Latest review:

December 11th, 2011

Neela's Eggplant and Potato from Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking

I've been making this vegetable side dish since the early '80s. It's easy to prepare and is flavored with black mustard seed, coriander, cumin, and turmeric. I omit the cayenne because I like it a bit... read more >


recipe reviews (5)
book reviews (1)
useful review votes (14)

NurseBobbi's Reviews


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Cookbook Reviews

1 books reviewed. Showing 1 to 1Sort by: Rating | Title

Indian Vegan 300 + Recipes Cookbook

By Tarla
- 2011

December 10th, 2011 (edited 11th December 2011)

I purchased the Kindle edition of this book because it was inexpensive and promised hundreds of vegan Indian recipes. I was disappointed. Though some of the recipes are probably quite tasty, this book has larger problems.

The book opens with disclaimers. One claims that the recipes are "believed to be in public domain" and are, therefore, not copyrighted. It states they were "gathered from all over the net." In other words, the "author" didn't develop or write these recipes; instead, she took them from others by way of the Internet. As I looked through the recipes, I found one that I've made many times. The recipe listed as "Eggplant and Potato (Indian)" is actually "Neela's Eggplant and Potato" from Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking, published by Knopf in 1981. So much for public domain.

A second problem with the book is that not all of the recipes are vegan. Many list butter and other dairy products as ingredients. They're easy to replace, but a book that claims to be vegan should only include vegan ingredients.

If possible copyright infringement and false advertising aren't enough to discourage you from purchasing this book, there's more. To say that it's poorly organized would be an understatement; it's not organized at all. It opens with the disclaimers and goes straight to a list of the recipes. The list is in no apparent order, and the formatting of the entire eBook is atrocious.

ETA: I returned the eBook to Amazon.com for a refund and told them about my concerns.