Indian-ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family

This jazzy cookbook from Krishna, a contributor to The New York Times, The New Yorker, and other publications, is a refreshing take on the kind of food that gets made in the American home kitchens of families with Indian roots.

It's not a guide to the traditional dishes of the subcontinent—although there certainly are some here. Instead, it's a buoyant display of culinary adaptation made by cooks who find themselves in a new place, with new flavors and ingredients but the same old love of good eats they were raised with.

There are no crisp, bright lines between traditional and adapted food in Indian-ish. Although Krishna provides abundant credit to her innovative mother, Ritu, who was raising a family in the US while traveling the world for work, it's hard to say where something like tamarind, fig, and cumin chutney, first concocted in a Houston kitchen, falls on the traditional-adapted continuum.

What's important is how appealing many of these recipes seem: roti pizza; tomato rice with crispy cheddar; savory peanut-lime tapioca. And Krishna certainly writes with an infectious enthusiasm. Also worth noting: there are only four recipes in this book that are not vegetarian.

Hardcover. Color throughout.