FLOYD'S INDIA
by Keith Floyd
Published in Hardback (2001)
By Harper Collins
ISBN 0 00 414088 5
192 pages
Reviewed by Lopa Patel

Rating: (4 flames)
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I've hugely enjoyed Channel 5's new cookery program, 'Floyd's India'. More so, because the always slightly inebriated Keith Floyd has traversed India, eating all manner of "Delhi Belly" inducing dishes, often without a single slurp of his favourite alcoholic tipple! It has been refreshing hearing Floyd extol the virtues of lassi, coconut juice and nimbu pani for a change.

What he brings to Indian cooking, apart from his gusto for the dramatic and general bonhomie, is a little humility. Brought out of semi-retirement in Spain, our erstwhile TV-celebrity chef received a fax one day "Go and do a series in India" it said. "I don't know anything about India" he replied, "Don't worry" they said, "We will send you all the information. All you have to do is pop on the plane and get cooking". And so, with a little help from film crew, a director, a stills photographer, his wife and the Taj Hotel Group among his entourage, that is exactly what he did!

The cookbook that accompanies the series is, like many cookbooks of today, part travelogue, part diary, part recipe book and part decorative. The beautiful scenery of India and Floyd's journey are all captured magnificently in Kim Sawyer's photographs.

Floyd learns about the different types of Indian cooking: starting in Kerala, South India, then travelling up to Portuguese-influenced Goa, then Chennai, Mumbai, Rajasthan, Calcutta & West Bengal and ending in the Punjab, omitting Gujarat, Central India and many others states besides. An epic culinary journey that took him about two and a half months to complete.

The description of each region is entertaining and the photography is entrancing. So much so that you will find it hard to read beyond the first fifty pages and move onto the recipes. And herein lies the weakness of this book.

Whilst I enjoyed watching Floyd or the Taj Group chefs conjure up such exotic dishes as Paturi Macchi (Steamed Fish fillets), Chingri Malai Curry or the special Imperial Biryani, the recipes are a little fussy and complicated to cook. But then, the book is a little like Floyd's trip - highly personalised. He does warn against slavishly following the recipes. Many of the ingredients - like curry leaves, banana leaves, lotus seeds, yams, shallots, jumbo tiger prawns, pomfret and mangosteens are very hard to find at your local supermarket. Floyd does his best to suggest alternatives like monkfish and sea bass for fish and kitchen foil in the place of banana leaves.

The recipes in this book, whilst exotic, are impossible to recreate in the "Smallbone fitted kitchens" of the UK. Part of the delight of the series has been to watch Floyd burn his fingers on all manner of "Heath Robinson", coal-fired cooking contraptions. Alas, in rain-sodden, grey London, even the Alleppey Fish Curry does little to conjure up the delights of this Kerala coastal town.

At times, I found the TV program cringingly gauche as when Floyd tries to explain that curry leaves are an in intrinsic part of Indian cooking and that Lassi was a yoghurt-based refreshing drink! Hardly necessary when the UK has over eight thousand curry houses and one in four people now eat curry once a week*. But one forgives Keith Floyd on this, his personal journey of discovery. The audience and readers are mere voyeurs to Floyd's own culinary learning curve.

At least by calling on the professional chefs of the Taj Group and other hotels, Floyd has avoided the "this recipe is a firm favourite of my friend Bunty of Gwalior" statements so beloved by the doyenne on Indian Cooking.

There are gaps in this Indian Tour: Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have been omitted. But, I guess something has to be left for the second series! Floyd has undoubtedly been captivated by India and this book is a gourmand's delight for all things Indian.

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* Information from Mintel "Indian Foods, Market Intelligence" Report (April 2001)