The title of the book, Easy and Healthy Indian Cooking, says it all. Cooking being my passion, I like to prepare a variety of dishes for my friends and family. I do not bake much. Most of my cooking is on the stove top or grill. Every time I try to follow a cookbook, the long list of ingredients and instructions is very intimidating to me. I feel discouraged to try the recipe. I came up with a solution. I read the recipe thoroughly and come up with my own list of ingredients and instructions, and most of the time, I am happy with the product. This experience has made me think about the word easy. My goal in writing this book is to make it easy for cooks of every level to follow. When it comes to ingredients, I have followed the concept of "less is more."

The other goal of writing this book is to give my readers some very good options for preparing healthy but tasty dishes for themselves. Indian dishes in restaurants are full of oil, cheese, and cream, which may not be very wise to consume every day. Indian dishes from Calcutta are always prepared from fresh vegetables, herbs, fish, and meat. As a result, there is very little use of preservatives in Bengali cuisine. Also, very little use of cream and cheese makes Bengali cuisine low in calories. This book contains more than a hundred vegetarian and nonvegetarian recipes. I am sure my readers will find lots of those dishes very appealing.

The staple food for Bengalis is both rice and bread. So I have added a few methods of making rice and bread. I am sure that my readers are going to find those interesting.

Bengali desserts are very popular all over India and abroad, and I have assembled a few easy recipes for my readers to try. Ingredients are not expensive and easily available in any Indian grocery store.