Hello there! I’m Avi – the cook, writer, and photographer behind PureCurry.com. I’m from India and have been living in the U.S. for many, many years. I started PureCurry.com in 2016 to share my knowledge of Indian food and cooking with Indian food enthusiasts. When I first started learning to cook, I blindly followed recipes to the minutest details. The results were not always as I would have expected, and I realized that it was because there was not enough information in the details to enable me to adapt it to my kitchen. And so, in my recipes, I try to go beyond just providing instructions on what to do by explaining why a recipe is prepared a certain way. I post articles that discuss the details of ingredients and techniques that may be unfamiliar to a cook new to Indian cooking. I believe that if cooks understand why things are done a certain way, and if they can understand the science behind the recipe, they will be more confident and open to experimentation and going beyond the recipe. This is particularly valuable when cooking with spices, because the sauces are the perfect canvas to express one’s culinary creativity.
With such a broad range of ingredients to choose from, cooking Indian food may seem daunting at first glance. But, once you get familiar with some basic cooking patterns, you’ll be cooking effortlessly in no time. I’ve been cooking for many years now and, ever since I became curious about understanding the why behind recipes, my cooking skills have improved in leaps and bounds. In addition to reviewing a number of recipes from professional chefs and home cooks (and applying tips and tricks I learned from my mother), I speak with the best cooks in my family before I start my own experiments with a recipe. I frequently refer to my collection of books for the best way to handle ingredients and to execute a recipe; some of these books are listed below.
My Book Collection
On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee
The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America
Larousse’s Gastronomique
THE FOOD LAB by J. Kenji López-Alt
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