Dear Reader,
I’m writing to tell you about THE INDIAN SLOW COOKER: 50 Healthy, Easy, Authentic Recipes, by Anupy Singla (October 1, 2010, Agate Surrey, 978-1-57284-111-6, $19.95). This terrific guide to making healthful, flavorful Indian food using the simplicity and convenience of the slow cooker is the first such book of its kind.
These great dishes are all prepared in healthful versions that use far less oil and saturated fat than traditional recipes. Singla has discovered how to use the slow cooker's means of keeping food moist through its long, slow cooking cycle as a way to prepare great-tasting Indian dishes that are both healthier and simpler to prepare. Once the ingredients are in the slow cooker, there’s no need to be tied to the kitchen while it’s preparing your meal.
The Indian Slow Cooker shows the busy, harried family cook that preparing healthy meals can be simple, and that cooking Indian is just a matter of understanding a few key spices. Singla introduces readers to the mainstay spices of an Indian kitchen, and how to store, prepare, and combine them in different preparations. Among her 50 recipes are the classics of Indian cooking: mostly vegetarian specialties like dal (of every variety), palak paneer, and gobi aloo, but also meat dishes like butter chicken, keema, and many more.
Anupy Singla is an award-winning journalist with more than a decade of experience covering business and general news as a TV and print reporter in Chicago. Her food writing has appeared in several print and online publications including the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Wall Street Journal. She's demonstrated her Indian cooking skills on WGN-TV and blogs about her recipes at www.indianASapplepie.com. This is her first cookbook.
I hope you will consider this book for a review or news feature. The timing is perfect for Diwali—the Indian New Year celebration that takes place in late October/early November—and is being released at a time when both Indian cuisine and slow cookers are becoming more popular. Anupy Singla is an excellent interview: appealing, articulate, and passionate about the subject. Please contact me at 847.475.4457 or at seibold@agatepublishing.com to set up an interview with Anupy Singla or learn more about her book.
Yours,
Doug Seibold
Contact: Doug Seibold, Agate
847.475.4457, seibold@agatepublishing.com
50 Healthy, Easy, Authentic Recipes
By Anupy Singla
Hook: A former on-air TV reporter turned food-blogging mom shares her secrets for healthy, easy, authentic Indian food using the simplicity and convenience of the slow cooker. While there are hundreds of Indian cookbooks and even more books on slow cooking, never has a book put the two together—until now.
After having two children, television reporter Anupy Singla became interested in
reconnecting her family—especially her two young daughters—with their Indian roots. She was determined to learn how to make every Indian recipe she grew up with, from sweet to savory, in a quest to explore her heritage and teach her children to appreciate wholesome and healthy Indian food. For those who love Indian food—or who are interested in starting to explore it—The Indian Slow Cooker is an invaluable guide, especially when it comes to understanding the key spices and spice combinations that are at the heart of this fabulous culinary tradition. Among the recipes included:
Anupy Singla formerly worked as a reporter and anchor for Bloomberg News, WGN and CLTV, and CNN. Her food writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Wall Street Journal among other publications. She blogs at www.indianASapplepie.com. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughters.
October 10, 2010, 978-1-57284-111-6, 8 x 9, 136 pp (4-color), Cooking & Wine, $19.95
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“Next time you have a hankering for Indian food, don't think take-out. Think ahead. That's the message from Anupy Singla, author of The Indian Slow Cooker (Surrey Books, 2010), who is on a mission to correct misperceptions about Indian food—that it's heavy; that you have to buy ‘100 spices’ to make anything; that it's ‘hot’; that it's labor intensive… And remember that in a country where many people cook over a single gas burner, home-style food was designed to be simple. ‘Indian food is supposed to be very easy,’ she says. ‘There doesn't have to be that intimidation factor that you're going to be in the kitchen slaving.’”
Michele Kayal, Associated Press
“Close on the heels of the bubbly Aarti Sequeira’s win this month on the sixth season of “The Next Food Network Star” competition—the first episode of her show “Aarti Party” aired Sunday—another Indian-American journalist-turned-chef wants to teach Americans how to cook Indian food in a crock-pot. Anupy Singla’s book, The Indian Slow Cooker, will be out in October. In the meantime she’s making a pilot for her own cooking show called “Easily Indian,” a family-friendly Indian cooking program. Ms. Singla says her book is aimed at anyone who wants to eat more vegetarian food and she doesn’t believe in calling Indian food ‘spicy’ or ‘exotic’ anymore. ‘Indian food to me frankly is just like any other food in America,” the former on-air TV reporter, who lives in Chicago with her family, told India Real Time. ‘I think it’s becoming assimilated in American food culture.’”
Wall Street Journal, “India Real Time Blog”
“Singla's book goes against what many believe is required of Indian cuisine—infusing hot oil with a whole mess of spices as the base for dishes. Instead, she argues, throw everything into the Crock-Pot and let the aromatics do their thing... the book gives old- and new-school cooks alike ample reason to give Indian food a shot.”
Janet Rausa Fuller, Chicago Sun-Times
“What a departure from the usual slow cooker cookbooks on offer. Anupy Singla's new cookbook, The Indian Slow Cooker, released earlier this month by Surrey Books, is likely the book to convince you that you do, in fact, need a slow cooker (or if you already have one hiding at the back of your kitchen cupboard, this will be the motivation to pull it out and dust it off). Singla's recipes, and writing in general, exudes common sense and practicality. For instance: ‘The advantage of Indian slow cooking is that it is scalable... virtually every recipe can be cut in half or by a third, and its taste and look will parallel the original recipe.’...Straightforward, healthy recipes for easy preparations of all your favourite Indian dishes combined with mouthwatering photographs make this a cookbook any lover of Indian food will appreciate.”
Eat magazine