Many people visit Indian restaurants, discover they love food from India, but then have no way to re-create this experience at home. It’s always nice to enjoy a good restaurant meal, but it’s much better to enjoy these complex dishes in your own dining room. Thankfully, there are a host of online resources to help the aspiring cook learn the intricacies of Indian cuisine. The first thing on your shopping list should be some good cookbooks. Pushpa Bhargava’s From Mom With Love – A Complete Guide to Indian Cooking and Entertaining (Amazon, $25) contains recipes and tips for both novices and more experienced chefs. A good companion volume is 5 Spices, 50 Dishes: Simple Indian Recipes Using Five Common Spices, by Ruta Kahate (Amazon, $13.57.) Once you’ve spent some time reading through the cookbooks, you’ll need to order the right spices and sauces, as well as cooking tools specific to Indian cuisine. IshopIndian carries many different groceries, utensils and cookbooks, as well as Indian music, movies, incense and health and beauty items. The IshopIndian’s spices selection is impressive, covering 13 different online pages with selections such as cumin seeds, crystallized ginger, mustard seeds, paprika, sesame seeds, star anise and lemon powder. Beginning cooks should consider buying a chrome roti/chapati press. This six-inch cooking utensil ($22) flattens dough into thin, circular pieces, which are then fried or toasted. IshopIndian sells a gorgeous copper kadai, ($50), a shiny and large curved metal bowl used to cook and serve food. It’s similar to a wok, with a hand-hammered copper interior, and can be set on a dining table to great effect. Kamdar Plaza is another good online store for Indian food products. They have 13 different kinds of chutneys and sauces, for example, as well as a selection of Indian packaged sweets. When you are ready to serve this special meal to your family and friends, you’ll want to decorate the table with some beautiful candles from India. These floating lotus candles ($12) from Ten Thousand Villages can be lit and set in a large crystal bowl full of water for a relaxing centerpiece.