I would struggle to be able to review this book due to issues with the file/download. The issues stopped the flow of the book. The issues are:
- Missing words in the middle of sentences
- Stop/start sentences on different lines
- No clear definition of chapters.

Not sure if it was a file/download issue but there were lots of gaps and stops/starts which really ruined the flow. I would love the chance to read a better version as the description of the book appeals to me. I would be more than happy to re-read the book with a better file or as a physical book as the book topic and genre are of interest to me. If you would like me to re-review please feel free to contact me at thesecretbookreview@gmail.com or via social media The_secret_bookreview (Instagram) or Secret_bookblog (Twitter). Thank you.

Have made so many delicious curries from here which taste just like Indian takeaways! Will never go back.

Mouthwatering and tasty, these recipes stretch from sides to traditional Indian food to street food, and many vegetarian options. A must for any innovative cook!

What a wonderful cookbook to add to my library! In Curry Compendium, Richard Sayce expertly combines both volumes of his best-selling, Gourmand award-winning Indian Restaurant Curry at Home books, with a sprinkling of new recipes, to create the ultimate guide to cooking excellent British Indian Restaurant food in your own kitchen.
Mouthwatering dishes and five stars from me ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

At the start I must clarify that I am not British, but live in Europe and have over the years lived in both Africa and Asia where many authentic curries are served. I have never understood the British love of take-away curries, so I was intrigued to find out more about them by reading (and cooking from) this book.
On the plus side, I enjoyed reading Curry Compendium and understanding the background to the take away curry tradition in the UK. It is also comprehensive, including recipes for starters and sides, rice and breads, street foods, as well as curries.
But what a different process to the curries I have always made following recipes by Madhur Jaffrey and Vivek Singh etc. First you make a curry base which takes hours, then you cook the meat until tender, then you finally combine these with another cooking process to make the final dish! And to cap it all, you don’t use all the delicious stock that was generated when you cooked the meat! Fine for a restaurant, but why would you want to do that at home, when following a traditional curry recipe involves a far simpler process?
I always cook at least two recipes when I am reviewing a book, so I faithfully followed the recipe for making the base gravy (I made a third – it was a huge quantity!) then I made the mix powder (spices) then I cooked the lamb, and finally I made the Rogan Josh. I repeated the process with Chicken Korma; granted it was quicker because I had enough base gravy, but it still involved this seemingly wasteful precooking of the meat. Both recipes were tasty, but I found the back and forth to the instructions for the various components, as well as the cooking time, unnecessary.

While I enjoyed the occasional curry, I didn't really get into the real love for it until I moved to the UK. Curry houses are on every street corner there and all of their food is absolutely delicious. During lockdown I found myself occasionally experimenting with curry dishes, not always successfully. So naturally I gravitated to the Curry Compendium as soon as I saw it. Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review and thank you to Literally PR for including me in the blog tour!

Key to know with Curry Compendium is that the recipes and tips featured in this book are geared towards British Indian Restaurant (BIR) food. This does differ from traditional Indian cuisine although, as a novice, I couldn't entirely point out the exact differences. The clear and detailed introduction by Sayce, however, lays out his love for and experience with BIR and it got me very excited for trying out his recipes. The General Information is also really useful because I can't tell you the amount of times I have poured over recipes and wondered what they meant by a spoonful. Is it heaped or is it flat? How thick is a sauce meant to be? All of this is explained right at the start, alongside suggestions of how to combat initial hiccups or taste issues. Working with spices can be tricky and I was really glad that so much attention was paid to it at the beginning. It gave me more confidence going into the cooking process!

From Base Gravy to basic Mixed Spices, Sayce starts you at the beginning, with the basics that need to be nailed to then build into a solid curry practice. The recipes aren't the most straightforward in the sense that they feature a lot of ingredients and have detailed steps. However, as Sayce says himself, with BIR food this absolutely pays off and adds to the complexity of flavour. Don't let the amount of information put you off. Rather, read through it step by step and let it sink in. A few recipes I am absolutely desperate to try is the Starters' recipe for Samosas. These are a no-brainer for me whenever I eat at a curry house or order Indian food, so learning how to make them is high on my list! Since I don't have a fryer I'm glad he also provided a way to bake them. Madras Curry is also high on my list, even if I'm not one of the grumpy men that usually make up its fanbase. While Tikka Masala looks intimidating it is also on my list and the steps are laid out so clearly that I have a great hope it will succeed. Since I predominantly eat vegetarian I was also very happy to have a section dedicated to that. The moment I find a store here in the Netherlands that sells paneer all of these curries are happening! Also Aloo Gobi, that is also happening.
What I really appreciated is that many elements of this book are accompanied either with step-by-step explanations featuring photos or QR codes to videos on Sayce's Youtube page. Sometimes you just need that extra guidance! This is all part of the personal touch that really shines from every page. Sayce's love for this cuisine and his years of experimenting and perfecting are clear from each recipe. I also liked that almost every recipe has Notes, which allow you to take the recipe a step further or to make it slightly easier, depending on how you're feeling that night. While cooking a proper curry still feels slightly intimidating, I feel a lot more secure after having read Curry Compendium. With all these tips and ideas, I think I'm in for some delicious meals, lockdown or no!

Curry Compendium is a great BIR cookbook, full of incredibly useful tips and delicious recipes! Whether you want to go spicy or start with practicing side-dishes, Sayce has something for everyone!

A fab new recipe book perfect for the change in the seasons! There’s nothing better as the weather changes than having a warm tasty curry! This is the essential for all your curry making needs and has all the info you could need about the best ingredients, techniques and best of all mouthwatering recipes and accompanying pictures!

Firstly, thank you to everyone at @literallypr for inviting me to take part in this tour, everyone I have spoken to there has been fantastic. Not only did I get a copy of a PDF version of Curry Compendium, they treated me to a hardback copy also which is absolutely beautiful.

Description 🔖

This is the definitive guide to creating British Indian Restaurant cuisines in the comfort of your own home. During lockdown, lots of people started to try and replicate their favourite restaurant dishes themselves and this book is everything you need to give you the inspiration to do just that with British Indian recipes.

General Thoughts 🤔

Let me start by saying that I absolutely love Indian food. I have travelled to India and eaten authentic food there, but I also adore British Indian food; which is different. Getting a takeaway on a Friday or Saturday night is a British tradition and Indian is my favourite takeaway to get. So to have the option to create those kind of flavoursome and tasty meals at home is very exciting to me.

I’ll also be clear that I am not the cook in my household. My partner loves cooking and does the majority of it, but when I got this book, I wanted to lock myself away in the kitchen and get on by myself. The recipes have ignited something in me and I’ve been spending a LOT of time over my stove and putting fantastic meals on the table.

I would highly advise reading the beginning of this book before diving straight into the individual recipes. I learnt a lot about base gravy and other things by doing so which I think made cooking the recipes easier and gave me some context as to why I was doing what I was doing. It’s also really interesting.

I loved that each recipe included a link to a YouTube video showing the recipe being cooked. Although I am fine with following written instructions, it was so helpful to have the option of a visual guide as well. I found myself flicking between the two.

I’ve tried a couple of the recipes now and they’ve both been amazing. Really easy to follow, clear and precise which is everything I need in a good recipe. The final product tasted amazing and as a non-cook I had a huge sense of pride (sad I know). We’re veggies in our household so I just switched out the meat for potatoes and mushrooms and it worked really well.

Both my partner and I were so impressed with how tasty these meals were and the depth of flavour. It truly was like eating a takeaway that was cooked in our own kitchen. What I particularly liked was that there was considerably less grease in the curries than what we usually get from a restaurant as that does sometimes put me off a little bit.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖️

I cannot recommend this book enough. If you love British Indian food and whether you’re a beginner or advanced in the kitchen, I think that you would learn a lot from this book. I’m grateful to this book for lighting a fire under me and inspiring me to try new things in the kitchen. Can’t wait to get stuck into plenty more of the fabulous recipes within the book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Misty Ricardo’s Curry Kitchen, and Richard Sayce for an Advanced Copy of this book as well as letting me participate in this book tour. All opinions in this review are my own.

Let me start with I am not a professional chef. I enjoy cooking, I want to be a better cook, and I enjoy reading cookbooks to get inspiration for recipes that I might be able to make at my skill level. I also live in a small desert city in the United States (population of roughly 100,000 people with most of them being for the two universities), so the ability to get specialized ingredients is always a bit more difficult, so I have to fudge a lot of things if I am trying to make things on my own. Pause: Story time from trying to make recipes from this book. I went to the store to get filo dough or wonton wrappers, and asked the clerk where I might be able to find them (new store still for me) and he asked if it was like pizza dough and took me to that, since that was the closest dough he had at that grocery store. I ended up going with pastry puff sheets and crescent roll dough from a different store, which worked out better than expected for the samosas (see below), but are DEFINITELY not what is called for. That being said, I have never backed down from a challenge, and the ability to try and cook out of this cookbook was exactly that – a huge challenge.

This is one of the most in-depth types of cooking I have ever tried to do, and when I succeeded I felt like the most successful person in the world, but when I struggled I wanted to give up cooking completely. Now, that’s not the fault of the cookbook – that is just the nature of the food being prepared. This book gives step by step instructions, with all of the measurements needed at the beginning of each recipe for ease of mise en place (“put everything in place” aka prep for those who don’t watch a ton of cooking shows like me), before starting cooking. However, the cookbook does have a few quirks that requires some getting used to – especially if you aren’t using this book a lot, or like me, you don’t use the metric system (darn you U.S. schools!).

First, if you are like me and are in the US, so you don’t intrinsically know the metric system, make sure you have something ready to convert all of the measurements for ingredients for every recipe. I would have loved if there was a conversion chart or something in the back of the book, but alas, the internet became my friend a lot during this cooking process. Also, there are some key components to British Indian Cooking (what these recipes are) that get used throughout multiple dishes, but they are told once at the beginning at the book, and then not again during the recipes they are used in. For example, there is a spice mix that is used in some of the dishes, but if you just go to make that dish it will say you need the spice mix without telling you what is in said spice mix. You need to go back to the beginning of the book, make the spice mix, and then go back to your recipe, unless you have pre-prepared spice mix already. This is when that mise en place is very important, but it can make things a bit complicated if you are like me and don’t realize you are missing something for a base ingredient until you have already gone to the store 5 times to get other things since ingredients are cross-listed so many places. As I continue to use this cookbook I am sure I will get the hang of figuring out where everything is located, but until then, it was a bit difficult. Some of the steps were also not very clear, but I am going to chalk that up to I was reading an advanced copy of the book and so formatting was off – I was looking at a more finalized proof of the book and everything looks stunning, so I am sure all of my issues were purely because of the format I had for the cookbook. Bonus of the book that I should have utilized more were the QR codes that lead to YouTube videos showing how to make certain parts of the recipes but I was stubborn. Don’t be like me!

Let’s talk about my successes though! I successfully made pilau rice, naan, the base spice mix, the base for curry, and vegetable samosas (kinda)! (see below pictures) Not only were they successful but they tasted good too – well, I didn’t taste the base sauce, but it smelled good! I ended up having cooking nights with a few different people (COVID-safe of course), so it was fun even with all of the complicated things and having to fudge ingredients. The naan was the easiest thing I cooked, it didn’t take too long from start to finish, and it tasted delicious. I can’t wait to make it again & try incorporating different flavors. There is nothing better than soft bread, and this definitely hit that spot.

Overall, I am so happy that I was able to get a chance to read this cookbook & have the opportunity to try out these recipes for the book tour. I have many more recipes I want to try, plus I now know some tips from my trials & errors from before. I give this cookbook a solid 4/5 – it is definitely not for the beginner cook, but if you are willing to challenge yourself for delicious Indian food, it is worth it for sure.

This is a good cookbook. I enjoy Indian food and this is very detailed and I appreciate the little background on the various dishes.

Some recipes though, seem to be lacking in their ingredients list. For example, I’ve come across some that have no mention of Garam masala, only to have it written in the steps to add it to the cooking. I checked to make sure it really isn’t in the list of ingredients- it not! So no portions either.

Maybe this is just in the arc?

Anyway, I’m looking forward to trying some of the recipes. My main concern now is sourcing the ingredients.

All of these recipes look so delicious, I cannot wait to try more out for myself! I don't traditionally see these recipes where I'm from so I enjoyed being able to read and take recipes from this book.

An amazing book for British Indian food. The use of the word "curry" can be a bit tricky, but it was great to see the variety displayed in this book. The recipes were very easy to follow and always accompanied by a photo to help you with the end product. I loved the addition of the notes at the end of the recipes to provide you with additional insight into the cooking methods. Definitely a book I want for my kitchen.

4/5 Stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Misty Ricardo's Curry Kitchen for providing me with an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

For those who love a British Indian Restaurant/Takeaway type of curry rather than those miserable excuse for a curry from the jars in the supermarket, then this is the book for you! I guess if you look at the takeaway menu from your local curry house, a corresponding recipe is bound to be in this book.

The book is divided into the following chapters:
- Introduction, Equipment & Pre-Prepared Ingredients
- Starters
- Classic Curries
- Special Dishes
- Extra-Hot Curries
- Vegetarian Curries
- Side Dishes
- Rice & Breads
- Sundries
- Street Food & Other Specialities
- Upscaling Curry
- Inside a Restuarant
- Shopping List & Online Suppliers

This book is full of recipes, instructions and lots and lots of photographs to accompany it. The measurements are in metric and the ingredients are easily enough to get hold of; most supermarkets have them or if not go down to your local Asian supermarket - my daughter and I are always visiting ours! Plus, no fancy equipment is required to make these currys, it's probably enough to have at least a frying pan and wooden spoon to get you going to begin with.

It's not a book where the currys can be made quickly; each recipe requires you to have made the Base Gravy in advance, which is the thing that really adds the flavour. Also recommended is the pre-preparing and cooking of the meats - again it adds a whole other layer of flavour to the dish.

There are certainly lots of dishes I would love to try from the cookery book, Pasanda being the first one. I already make the Cumin & Onion Pilau but will certainly try the Pilau rice in the future.

The author makes it clear that the recipes are for one portion, but there is a chapter on how to increase it so you can make more portions. There are two tables on how to get the ingredients correct for the portion size as it's not as easy as just doubling things, especially when it comes to spices, how to change the timings and what size cooking pots you would require.

Also the author has QR codes on many of the recipes which link to a YouTube video showing you how to make the recipe. Such an excellent idea.

Overall this is a brilliant book on curry making for the home, and I would certainly get one for my book shelf.

I received this book from netgalley in return for a honest review.

Anyone who has eaten at one of the many hundreds of Indian restaurants in Britain knows how fabulous the curries are there. And believe it or not, in Britain there are even excellent curries in the deli cases of the larger grocery stores (very unlike what you get in US grocery delis – the curries are actually edible and delicious). Up to now it’s been quite difficult to make good British curry at home, but Richard Sayce, who is considered an expert on British Curries, has made it easy in his excellent cookbook, Curry Compendium: Misty Ricardo's Curry Kitchen. The varieties of curry in this book are endless, and include traditional and unique new curries.

This beautiful cookbook will educate everyone – from beginners to seasoned cooks – on the basics of British Indian Restaurant Curry (BIR) including spices, pantry supplies, and most importantly, step by step photographs to making perfect curry every time. Sayce has included a chapter on making premixed spices at home so they can be at the ready whenever someone craves curry, and also how to precook the meats for curries. No need to use jarred sauces (which really aren’t very good anyway). Once a few recipes are followed in this book, having to go out for curry will be a thing of the past. There are also recipes for traditional accompaniments, such as Onion Bhaji, pakoras, and samosas. This cookbook also includes gorgeous photographs.

Since this excellent cookbook is published in Britain, it can be obtained on the British Amazon website (amazon.co.uk), and it is worth it. Of course the measurements in the recipes are British, but there is a table to convert the ingredients to American measurements.

This is by far the best curry cookbook out there. Anyone who wants to master good curries at home will consider this a “must have” cookbook. It will be used over and over and will keep curry lovers happy with new curries for months on end.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

It is fairly surprising in this day and age to see publishers allowing “jokes” about how Korma is good for the ladies (the implication being that women can’t handle the spice of other curries)… This book is clearly written for a British audience, but others may find some tasty recipes here. There are decent notes for each recipe and the directions seem to be easy to follow. There is limited information about each recipe as an introduction, but this collection is not a good resource for those wishing to dive deep into Indian culinary traditions. Also, not a great resource for vegan or plant based folks.

I and my husband are avowed curry lovers, so when I saw that this book was available to read and review on NetGalley, I put in an immediate request. I have made many curries but that elusive depth of flavor of a great restaurant curry has never been there. Hoping to change my luck and improve my skills, I happily devoured the Advance Reading Copy of this new cookbook.

Written by restrateur and author Richard Sayce, founder of Misty’s Ricardo’s Curry Kitchen, this volume takes some of the best of his recipes from his previous two-volume Gourmand-Award-winning cookbooks and combines them in this volume with a splash of something new. After reading EVERY recipe in this book, I plan to buy it as soon as it is available. I also decided to make a couple of the recipes! As I do a lot of cooking, I find cookbook reviews without a discussion of making at least a couple of the recipes to not be useful.

To make the recipes in this cookbook, I had to make a special expedition to a newly opened Indian Market about 12 miles away. There I loaded up on spices with my husband helping me. About halfway through the shopping spree, a young female clerk asked “Are you planning to do some cooking?” That was an understatement as I had a veritable pile of new spices.

The first recipe I made was Tandoori Chicken. The prep did take awhile, but it was well worth it in the end. I also discovered that I needed to bake the chicken longer than recommended to get it done all the way through, but that was the fault of my older oven (even with an oven thermometer). The chicken turned out moist and tender with a depth of flavor that I have never experienced with restaurant Tandoori Chicken. Usually, it is dried out and sharp tasting; not this recipe. You could easily do chicken breasts that aren’t too thick as I think they will stay moist. Or try something else, like fish. I have been considering thick catfish filets for this recipe. It was delicious and the leftovers were even better after a day of resting in the refrigerator.


The second recipe I made was the Punjabi Chicken (Staff Curry) from a friend of the author who is from Scotland. It just looked intriguing. I already had my spices, all I had to do was to clean up the chicken thighs and follow the recipe. I managed to score some large Roma tomatoes and assorted hot peppers at the local Farmer’s Market (one of the three I used was a Thai Bird Chili). The seller wasn’t certain what the rest were, but they were hot and delicious, a mix of red and green fresh chilis.


The Punjabi Chicken did have several steps and took some cooking time (the recipe called for 60 minutes of simmering, I let it go 30 more on a very low setting) to make sure the chicken thighs were not only cooked through but tender. I don’t have a commercial grade stove, I have a 30 year-old premium stove and it just took longer than 60 minutes to simmer to the consistency and “doneness” that I wanted. Also, I sautéed the whole spices but then I gathered them into a cheesecloth bag and put the bag back in before adding the chicken, tomatoes, and tomato paste. I may have sacrificed a little flavor but saved our dental work. We’ve shared restaurant biryani before that was like eating a straw bale with bird seed; picking all of the pieces and seeds out rather ruined the dining experience. In this case, the Punjabi Chicken was not over-spiced, it was just right; it was absolutely delicious and had an after-burn from the fresh chilis.

I found the author’s advice on increasing portions without over-spicing the dish to be very interesting. Also, there are recipes included that I have never heard of before but will probably try.

I definitely will buy this cookbook and the two previous volumes by Mr. Sayce. I know that my knowledge and cooking technique moved up at least one whole step just reading this ARC.

I would like to thank Richard Sayce, Literally PR Ltd, and NetGalley for letting me read this book. I did not receive anything in exchange for this review. All photos in this reiew are my own and are copyrighted, no use without prior written permission.

I grew up around Indian food. My step dad is from Pakistan and food from these regions was often present in our home, especially when his family came to visit. Ironically, I didn't really fall in love with the taste of Indian food until I was 19 and found myself in London with my family on vacation. It may have been because it was familiar in a very unfamiliar place, but I think a lot of it was the the food was exceptionally good. Curry Compendium is a cookbook dedicated to the art of the British version of Indian food. This type of cuisine is not an easy one to conquer in the kitchen, so I really appreciate the very detailed efforts of this cookbook. The beginning introduces you to the spices, the tools necessary to make the food, and the step by step process of how to make the spice and curry mixes. The rest of the cookbook is dedicated to mouth watering recipes. Yes, Indian food is a labor of love, but the finished product is worth the effort, and Curry Compendium gives you the tools necessary to great the best BIR (British Indian Restaurant) curries possible.

Many people casually familiar with Curry would believe it is all the same. This book especially wants to present the thorough history, types of seasonings, and regional curries that are around the world. I have not checked out the Youtube channel but recently subscribed after finishing this. The photography to the details to the sections for every type of eater, meat or vegetarian. This is especially good for beginners who may feel overwhelmed cooking with Curry. What I love about cookbooks and cooking is never coming across a book where I am aware of every spice and ingredient. This had so many spices even I hadn't heard of and I've cooked with Curry for years. I highly recommend this cookbook for anyone who is even curious about Curry.

A book about cooking in the British Indian Restaurant (BIR) style, this book provided a lot of information about how to cook before getting to the recipes. It felt like a textbook and I worried that I wouldn't remember all the directions once I got to actually trying a recipe and fail the test. This beginning section felt both disorganized and repetitive with information that I think would have been better suited to be provided with the applicable recipes. Additionally, I was overwhelmed with all of the preparations required prior to cooking. An example of this is the base gravy that is made ahead of time and then needs to be watered down prior to using. This is mentioned many many times through the beginning of the book but never during the course of the recipes. I would have found it more helpful to have mentioned once that the base gravy would be diluted during the course of cooking and then have the recipes themselves state "dilute 75ml base gravy on a 1:1 ratio and add to pot" or something similar instead of assuming the cook will continue to remember to dilute it and whether they had or had not already done so. I realize this confusion may be a personal issue, but I've seen myself cook and this sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Two other personal problems with the book: First, recipes are for individual portions which hinders the ability to cook for a family. The author does provide examples on how to upscale but cautions the whole way through that this is not ideal. Second, there were several formatting issues throughout the book. Incomplete sentences that left worrisome cliffhangers or recipes that merged ingredients and directions. While I would like to assume most of these have been resolved, I would caution readers to read through an entire recipe making sure to catch ingredients that don't show up until halfway through the directions and that all directions are complete and make sense. No good to get 3/4 of the way through a dish to find out that you missed something! I don't feel like this is a cookbook you can pick up to feed your family the same day. It is very much a plan ahead kind of book and take the time to slowly learn the intricacies of cooking; therefore, not an ideal one for me. If you have more time and patience than me this might be a great book for you! However, it did give me a greater appreciation of the take out food I have always enjoyed from my local Indian restaurants.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Misty Ricardo's Curry Kitchen for the ARC. I am voluntarily reviewing this book. I enjoyed reading this book. I so want to make some of these dishes!! At the moment, I have no kitchen or stove, just a small microwave. I eat all my meals at the mess hall. LOL So not the same, as cooking or eating quality prepared foods. This has all my favorites, plus many more that I can't wait to try! 4 stars