Beyond Brilliant Book Review
I have never really tried to make any Indian myself, I was always a bit scared to do a curry as I thought they would be very complicated with the wide variety of spices.
I do love Indian food, there are always so many different levels of flavour that just makes it so tasty.
After interviewing Dipna Anand, I learnt that she had published Beyond Brilliant. A great book that features over 40 recipes from the actual kitchens of The Brilliant Restaurant.
As I don’t have any other Indian Cookbooks, I thought id buy it and try a few of the recipes myself.
The book arrived at work and as soon as it arrived I opened it up and had a quick glance through the pages. Each page is filled with high quality and colourful pictures.
Beyond Brilliant gives a good introduction to the history of brilliant so you can earn how it got started in Kenya and how it became the great restaurant it is today. There is a section on Dipna being a student and then taking the role of a teacher, she does many lectures or food demonstrations.
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Its in this section that you learn a bit about basic preparation, how to make a green chilli paste, different ways of cutting/chopping an onion and then toasting and crushing spices.
There is then a section on the Brilliant Restaurant where you can read about Dipna’s farther Gulu Anand and the restaurants head chef Jasvinderjit Singh. Its a good to hear that they want to stick to authentic Indian food and only serving food that they would want to eat themselves, you can really tell they care about their food and customers.
Later in the book there is a section on the Brilliant family where Dipna writes about her mother and her brother. Its interesting to read that her mother didn’t know how to cook but with time and practice she now cooks and even says she could teach her husband a few things. Dipna’s brother has been in the restaurant for 10 years as well as working hard in the restaurant he is working on finding new new clients and bringing in new business.
One thing you can really tell from the book is that the whole Brilliant business is a family business and that family means a great deal to them, which I think its excellent! There is then a final section on the Brilliant Wedding, giving a bit of information on the wedding as well as Dipna’s Involvement in it.
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I really think these bits of information really add to the recipes of the book as it helps you understand where the passion comes from, passion to me is very important when it comes to food and cooking. Its obvious that Dipna and the entire Brilliant family have a to of love for what they do and passion for Indian food.
Now onto the recipes….
There are over 40 different recipes in the book, all from the kitchens of the actual Brilliant Restaurant so you know they are all tried and tested. One of the things I love about the book is that each recipe covers two pages. One of the pages has the ingredients and the method, the other page has a picture of the dish that covers the entire page.
The book features a nice mixture of recipes ranging from starters, mains, sides and desserts. I love the fact that it features desserts as I personally haven’t seen many recipes for Indian desserts so it would be nice to try and make some. I had some Indian Desserts when I went in 2014 and they are very nice!
Each recipe clearly marks what ingredients you need and the method is very clear, helping amateurs to Indian cooking like me to make a nice tasting dish with little worries 🙂
At the moment I have only made the Palak Chicken, which tasted amazing! It was that nice that my wife wanted me to make it again 2 days later, I would recommend it!.
There are a few dishes that I am looking forward to trying such as;
* Paneer Croquettes
* Bombay Alu
* Gajar Ka Halwa
* Masala Lamb
* Malai Kulffi
* Tandoori Salmon
* Mango Lassi
Another thing I really like about this book is the focus on healthy options as well. More and more people are looking to go for more healthy options, in my house we tend to replace certain things with others so that it is more slimming and less syns 🙂
Dipna has put a lot of focus on offering healthy options, helping to get rid of the myth that Indian food has to be unhealthy as it really doesn’t.
I really would recommend checking out Beyond Brilliant if you want to learn how to make tasty authentic Indian dishes from a family that has a real passion for the food they produce.