South Asia

South Asia encompasses India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, and the most important thing to understand about the entire category is that curry is not a cuisine but a British catch all term for hundreds of unrelated dishes.

Madhur Jaffrey made that point as early as 1973 in An Invitation to Indian Cooking and remains the writer who taught the Western world to distinguish between the regions. Punjabi cooking, with its tandoor and dairy products, has little in common with Bengali cooking based on fish and mustard oil, Kerala's coconut based cuisine or the vegetarian food of Gujarat.

Pushpesh Pant's India: The Cookbook brings together more than 1,000 recipes organised state by state and serves as the category's reference work.

Meera Sodha represents the modern home cooking tradition, Dishoom the legacy of the Iranian cafés of Bombay and London, while Masala mama offers a Swedish language route for anyone who wants to cook Indian food without going via English.

The foundation is the same everywhere, roasted whole spices, tempering in hot oil, pulses and bread, but the proportions determine everything.