Since I'm studying Indian food (Peter won't let me use the "W" word), I've accumulated a fair collection of fine titles at low cost on eBay. I'm not pissed about that.

I am pissed about UK cookbooks featuring Indian food.

American cookbooks (cookbooks published with American money, whether by Americans or by . . um, OK, Indians living here or elsewhere (Canada?)) are proud as Punch about their authors / authoresses / authorcritters and include a bio, balyhoo and statements by such worthy persons so I can quickly evaluate experience, bias and general world view. This is true of books from the '60s to now - much appreciated.

Indian cookbooks (published in India for the Indian market) do the same (I have several).

UK cookbooks often go to great length to conceal any and all information about who wrote them and present them as if they sprung full fledged from the brow of the publiher.

Is it really (Muhagli, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Southeast, Portuguise, Parsi, Anglo-Indian) Indian cooking, or is it UK regional cooking? What's the authors bent, windage and pitch?

Now, I recognize that UK is a legitimate and perfectly respectable region of India (cuisine wise), but I'd really like to know what we're talking about without having to study the recipes under a microscope looking for Manchester microbes or whatever I can find. Do UK cooks have some kind of identity crisis?

The one I have that has a recipe "Eggs Baked on Chip Sticks" ("chip sticks" are what we call "freedom fries" (the Frogs are delighted to finally be let off the hook on that one)) seems far more Indian subcontinent than another carefully free of UK terminology (except for the word "balti", which blows their cover sky high like a neutron bomb), even though in the fine print the main author's name is found to be "Shehzad Husain".

The other thing I'm pissed about with cookbooks about Indian food is that I can cook a different recipe every night of the week for the rest of my life without exhausting the cuisine. And then I could buy newer cookbooks (the whole approach in current books is entirely different from the '60s books, so it's bound to continue changing).

The food is absolutely wonderful (so long as I stay out of "Indian" restaurants (where the food is pretty much crap) and cook it myself).

Now, on to bios.

Here's one (from (an American) cookbook on Lebanese food) I read this to a retired schoolmarm friend (sort of, anyway, as much as someone who votes Republican can be a friend) who was feeling a bit smug about her "life achievement". Puts it in a broader context.

Doctor Madelain Farah was born in Portland Oregon. When her Lebanese American family went to Lebanon for a visit in 1936, they became stranded there throughout World War II. During those years she and her three brothers attended schools in Beirut.

Her formal education includes studies at the University of Oregon, Portland State University, the American University of Cairo, and the University of Teheran. She received her doctorial degree in Middle East studies at the University of Utah. Her repertoire of foreigh languages include Arabic, Persian, Spanish, French and Russian. She has been a Fulbright scholar to Egypt, and American-Iranian Cultural Exchange Fellow, and a National Defense Foreign Language Fellow. She was listed in Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges and Contemporary Authors of the United States.

Dr. Farah has been active in civic affairs, serving for two terms on the board of directors for the Portland chapter of the United Nations as well as in the Portland Mayor's Advisor Committee on Urban Development. She has been an active member of St. George Antiochian Church and is the first woman to be elected council president.

She has a number of years of teaching, lecturing and writing experience with special emphasis on Middle East Culture, literature and religious life. Dr. Farah wrote a regular cooking column for a West Coast newspaper. She has taught a number of classes on Middle East cookery and has made numerous TV appearances demonstrating Lebanese recipes from her book.

On the more glamorous side, she was Miss Lebanon-America, who appeared in numerous newspapers and on various magazine covers both in the United States and abroad. She also modeled for eight years.

So take that, deSitter. The only response from my Republican schoolmarm "friend" was, "Did she have any kids?".

But, anyway, it tells me where she's comming from. I like that in a cookbook.

. . use a term that is genuinely offensive. My original use of the acronym for "worthy oriental gentleman" was based on it being just a quaint relic of the British Empire over here, to those few who would actually recognize the term at all.

Since Peter says it's still truly offensive over there, and since the Web kinda ignores borders and oceans, I will not use it - except to stir up Peter's hornet's nest a little.