Rick Stein’s French Odyssey

We got this book at Christmas, browsed it enthusiastically, made a couple of recipes from it and then it got lost in the general melee of household life. We retrieved it again before our French holiday but left it at home since it is quite a large hardback. Now that we have returned from France we have read it with renewed vigor since much of it covers the area we have just been visiting.

The book accompanies a television series where Rick Stein travelled across France from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean on a series of canals, meeting food producers, visiting restaurants and cooking food along the way. One of the canals was the Canal Lateral a La Garonne which runs right through the area where we have been staying. The first part of the book is Rick’s diary of the trip, the second is a collection of recipes – some traditional from the regions and others developed by Rick as a result of the journey. The book is illustrated by the beautiful landscape photography of Craig Easton.

Rick places his usual emphasis on relatively simple recipes that rely on good quality ingredients and they are all eminently reproducible in a domestic kitchen. The ones we have made, including the Marmande tomato tart, have been delicious and we must try some of those that seem less immediately appealing (is a small pile of Puy lentils the ideal accompaniment to seared sallops?).

This book is well up to the high standard of Rick Stein’s previous books and functions both as an inspiring coffee table volume and a practical cook book in the kitchen.