Ebook Review: Easy Recipes from Mads’ Cookhouse by Madhu Bindra

Madhu Bindra, an army wife who by her own admission has traversed the length and breadth of India, has produced an ebook masterpiece using that travel experience here. As the title suggests, her recipes are truly easy; and her tagline ‘home cooking was never this uncomplicated’ is apt.

The ebook is a collection of 26 recipes for breakfast, main course, appetizer course, and soup course. Two soups also make it on the features here, and there are also a couple of side dishes. There is a good mix of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes here, which is great for people with mixed diets. The recipes are diverse, Indian, continental, and oriental, ensuring that they cater to diverse tastes or at the very least, to someone who loves hates routine cooking.

The recipes are simple and make use of common ingredients easily available in any Indian kitchen and that is truly a blessing since the photos are irresistibly mouthwatering. Though the book does not specifically stress on the recipes being healthy, a lot of them genuinely are. In fact, the very first recipe of air-fried chicken drumsticks, has you double-checking the preface, just in case you missed the ‘healthy recipes’ part.

The best thing about the book though are not the recipes. No, it is not in the photos either. It is not in the ease of cooking, not in the availability of use of common ingredients. the one thing that had be bowled over is the ebook’s design.

Yes, you read it right. While most recipe books struggle with formatting; with half the recipe being on one page, the other half being on another and indeed the photo being cut off elsewhere like the head of a chicken, this book is sorted in that count. Every recipe is cleanly posted on one individual page, and the page gives your everything you need to know in one clean glance. The photo is also clear and prominently placed. And honestly, in a world of amateur recipe books, this feels truly professional.

The one feature missing in this ebook, and indeed the only one missing here, is the mention of cooking and prep times. For kitchen disasters like myself, it is imperative to know how long a particular recipe will take. More so because I am most inclined to overcook it to the point of no return, or undercook it enough to fall into the ‘raw food diet’ category.

But other than that little glitch, that would really be nothing for kitchen stars like the rest of you, this ebook is a recipe revelation. So if you’d like to read a good old fashioned food book with a good mix of traditional and non-traditional recipes, pick this one up for free here.