One Spice, Two Spice ─ American Food, Indian Spices

Floyd Cardoz, chef and co-owner of New York City's Tabla restaurant, is one of the most exciting innovators working behind a stove today. And now, for the first time, he shares the extraordinary recipes that have established his reputation. In them Cardoz is able to make the quantum leap between the American palate and his taste memories—the food of his childhood in Bombay and Goa. The collection, One Spice, Two Spice, is an amalgam of two cuisines by a man who has mastered the flavors of each.

This volume of more than 140 recipes is a gift to all home cooks who enjoy the flavors of India but are intimidated by the unusual and numerous spices required to prepare these dishes. Here, Cardoz renders those spices user friendly in a down-to-earth primer and glossary. Then, in the recipe notes, he shows you how to easily integrate these new flavors into everyday meals and dinner-party fare. The techniques—sautéing, panfrying, braising, poaching, and roasting—are not new. The results, however, are astonishing.

Imagine crisp panfried black pepper shrimp, meaty sea scallops seared and served in a satiny sweet-sour glaze, asparagus and morels sautéed in a spicy blend of shallot, ginger, and chile—all of which can be made in no time flat. Other recipes—steak rubbed with crushed peppercorns and coriander, cumin, and mustard seeds, duck bathed in an aromatic orange curry, lamb meatballs filled with an herbaceous combination of fresh figs, cilantro, and mint and then napped with a lush, lustrous green sauce—may require more marinating or cooking time, but the trade-off is Cardoz's three-star-restaurant cooking at home.

One Spice, Two Spice is more than a cookbook. It is a gateway to a different way of thinking about the food on your plate, and it brings Indian flavors into the modern American repetoire.