At Home with Madhur Jaffrey

At Home with Madhur Jaffrey: Simple, Delectable Dishes from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka By Madhur Jaffrey, Knopf, 2010. Hardcover. $35; 301 pages

This is a veteran Indian cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey's bid to take a user-friendly approach for cooks who love the flavors of Indian cooking but don't have the time or patience for full mortar-and-pestle deployment. Jaffrey confesses to being time-pressed herself and sets out to deliver characteristic flavors in less time. This might strike a traditionalist as heretical. For example, traditional curry requires separate browning of wet seasonings (onion, ginger, garlic), toasting of dry spices, and browning of meats. In some cases Jaffrey simply puts all of the ingredients together, allows the meat to marinate, and then cooks. Baked Beef Curry proved both quick and deeply flavorful. There's nothing careless about this approach.