I have always loved indian food, and have spent the past couple of years trying to really learn to cook it well. by far my favorite indian cookbooks is
classic indian cooking, because she spends the whole first part of the book not on recipes, but talking about the styles of cuisine in different parts of india, and the reasons behind the different spice blends used (religous, economic, climate and geography are all major factors). it really does a great job of explaining the "whys" of spice usage as well as the "hows".
anyways, it turns out that the lady that wrote this book teaches a cooking class in nyc, so my in-laws got me a two day class with her for my bday. it was two days, 22 hours, and only 3 people in the class. it was really an amazing experience, and I learned a ton of techniques and other tricks. we made yogurt, paneer, sambhar, dal, goan shrimp, bengali shrimp and vegetables, saag paneer, parathas, pooris, idlis, dosas, kormas, tikka, mango lassis, and a lot of other things. also learned some great, simple ways to dry cook fish and vegetables.
the thing that's interesting about indian food that is hard to gather from going to many indian restaurants is the cuisines vary a ton by region, south indians use more coconut than dairy and rice is more of a staple than in the north. also they use different spice blends than in the north.
I also learned a lot from the
wikipedia series on the different regions.
although I initially thought indian cooking would be complex, it is actually not that hard and doesn't usually require any fancy kitchen stuff. what it does require is a large collection of different spices, which can be daunting when you are first getting into it. also a lot of ingredients, like the different varieties of lentils, can be hard to find outside of an indian grocery.
at any rate, I am far from an expert but have cooked a lot of indian food over the years, some of it has turned out awesome and (especially in the beginning) some of it not so great. if anyone has any cooking related questions I would be happy to add my 2 cents.