Cookbook
Photo: Courtesy of Robert Rose Inc.

It turns out that the wildly popular programmable pressure cooker known as the Instant Pot — it was on your Christmas lists, wasn’t it? — is an ideal gateway to Indian cuisine. “It took a modern appliance to reconnect me to my cooking heritage — and I’m not even a gadget person,” says Chandra Ram, the Chicago-based author of the new The Complete Indian Instant Pot Cookbook. The book emboldens cooks daunted by making Indian and Indian-inflected dishes at home, offering 130 fresh, Instant Pot–ready recipes, from a creamy aloo gobi chowder to a chipotle-scented butter chicken. Recipes for breads and desserts are included, as is a novice-friendly technique for making dairy-free yogurt (the secret: coconut milk), which can be used in a cooling raita to accompany the curries. And don’t worry: There are instructions for making the most of the plentiful leftovers.