Made in India

Meera Sodha’s debut cookbook and the perfect entry point into her work. Made in India collects over 130 recipes from three generations of her family, covering everything from quick street food snacks to slow weekend curries and celebratory feasts.

Why Start Here

Made in India is the foundation for everything Sodha has written since. It introduces her approach to cooking: family-tested recipes, honest flavors, clear instructions, and a refusal to make Indian food seem harder than it is. Her later books, Fresh India and East, expand into vegetarian and pan-Asian cooking, but this is where her voice and philosophy come through most clearly.

The book works especially well for beginners because Sodha writes from the perspective of someone who learned to cook in an English kitchen with English supermarket ingredients. She never assumes you have a specialist spice shop nearby. The recipes are practical, the portions are realistic, and the results consistently deliver on the promise of the headnotes.

What to Expect

A 320-page hardcover with photography by David Loftus. Over 130 recipes organized by meal type: snacks and street food, quick suppers, slow cooking, sides, and desserts. The difficulty ranges from simple raitas and chutneys to more involved dishes like lamb biryani, but the majority sit comfortably in the easy-to-moderate range. Named a book of the year by the Times and the Financial Times.