Having spent the weekend actually using it I can honestly say it is brilliant. The recipes are impressive enough to become a talking point at dinner parties (we made the little ragu of seafood) but easy enough to follow. Once tasted you can't understand how you used to make do with pasta or boring sausages and mash!

The pictures are beautiful - just make sure you don't read it when you are hungry! And each time you pick it up you are inspired to get in the kitchen - even though my kitchen is actually a building site at the moment and my City job doesn't enable me the time spend hours in the kitchen. It is a total pleasure and real relaxant to follow Rick's wonderfully traditional recipes. Together with the glorious photography and imagery of France it is a joy.

I highly recommend this to lovers of France and lovers of food!


Excellent   December 8, 2005
 21 out of 117 found this review helpful

One of my favorite books. Filled with excellent French recipes. I also enjoy and recommend Simple and Simply Delicious by Sylvie Rocher as another excellent French cookbook. I think these are the best of the lot.


Visual and gustatory feast in Steinworld   October 2, 2005
 141 out of 226 found this review helpful

To say that this book is an essential accompaniment to the television series is to do it a disservice, because it is a delightful publication in its own right. But combined with the television, it creates another wonderful window into Steinworld. Oh how I wish I were Rick Stein rather than a city solicitor! I would far rather get paid to drift down the Canal du Midi than drive through wretched Livingstone's congestion zone to a City office: what a wonderful world Rick inhabits. The TV series is a gem: the sights, the sounds, the people, the landscapes; one can almost smell and taste the foods he buys and prepares. Rather fun, too, is watching as he (and the crew) slosh their way through a hearty French country lunch with lashings of good vin de pays, all ending up glowing and bibulous -- often a prompt for some Stein philosophical musings to camera. Where the book, which is beautifully produced and printed, really shines is to allow one to read at leisure the recipes that flash by all too quickly on the TV screen, too quickly to scribble down anyway. And the recipes are a delightfully eclectic collection; none seems to be beyond the abilities of a reasonably experienced home cook, and everything is written with the characteristic Stein good humour and practicality. Steinworld has its food heroes in the UK, but those encounters are so often earnest and ponderous; in France, and this book, everything, including recipes, is infused with a passion and enthusiasm that is inspiring. Welcome to Steinworld.


Over 100 recipes   September 18, 2005
 196 out of 210 found this review helpful

inspired by the flavours of France........

From the D/J inner flap:-

'Intrigued by a little book by a yachtsman who preferred to use the canal system to get to the Mediterranean rather than sailing round Spain and Portugal, Rick embarks on his own journey of gastronomic discovery from Padstow, Cornwall, to Bordeaux and then to Marseille.
On the way he browses in French markets, meets the producers of wine and food and eats in family-run cafes.....Fully illustrated with beautiful food and landscape photography, this book is both a souvenir of an unusual and idyllic journey through rural France and an inspiring collection of classic and original recipes.....
The good news is that the French rural gastronomic dream is still a reality and the best of its food can be reproduced at home.'

216 shiny high quality pages split over 2 main parts:-

(1) Diary - `Notes from a Journey'

(2) The Recipes:-

Soups and Starters
Light Lunches
Fish and Shellfish
Poultry and Game
Meat and Offal
Desserts
Accompaniments and Basics

with a full index, enhanced by italics denoting pictured dishes.

Each recipe opens with typical Rick text, the title/s and number of servings, clear ingredients and the clearly laid out method.

'Why yet another recipe for 'French Onion Soup', you may ask?
The simple answer is that I have an enthusiasm for rescuing previously special recipes that have become too popular and thus subject to corner-cutting or over-inventiveness.
The main constituents of a good onion soup to me are onions - lots of them - slowly cooked over a long period to make them sweet, caramel brown and soft, a good beef stock and Gruyere cheese, which must be served bubbling and aromatic on top of the whole soup.'


A taste of the other recipes within:-

Cream of Mussel Soup *
Charentais Melon Salad
Seared Foie Gras on Sweetcorn Pancakes
Buckwheat Galettes
Steak Tartare
Cep Omelette
Roasted Sea Bass with Pastis
Zander Braised in Pinot Noir
Duck Confit with Braised Red Cabbage
Roast Partridge with Dubonnet *
Salt Pork with Lentils
Cassoulet
Bullfighter's Beef Stew with Macaronade
Roast Rack of Lamb
Griddled Spatchcock Quail
Moroccan Lamb Tagine
Roast Loin of Veal with Madeira Sauce
Ribeye Steaks cooked over an open fire
Baked Lemon Cheesecake
Tarte Tatin
Hazelnut and Chocolate Dacquoise
Crunchy Walnut Tart *
Hot Vanilla Souffles
Petits Pots au Chocolat
Normandy Cider and Apple Sorbet
Creme Caramel
Passion Fruit Creme Brulee

* - pictured on 'Amazon Images' above

With, Rick's noble acknowledging of others along the way:-

'Egg Mayonnaise'
'This recipe is from 'Simon Hopkinson', who joined us for part of the filming while we were in Marseille. You might almost be asking yourself, do we really need a recipe for something so simple? Yet this is one of those classic dishes that has been forgotten, and yet is fantastic when done well, which is sadly not always the case.'

and a bit of history, here and there:-

'Henry IV Poule au Pot'
Henry IV of France was born in Gascony, and as I have become to really like the Gascon enthusiasm for good, honest cooking, so has Henry IV become a bit of a hero to me.
First because in the 15th Century, as King, he said during his coronation speech, 'I want every peasant to have a chicken in the pot on Sundays.'
Secondly, in true Gascon style, he had such a love of garlic, particularly raw, that his bride Marguerite de Valois refused to share his bed on one occasion because of his bad breath.
Would that this recipe from those times, a masterpiece of flavour, sensible nutrition and economy, could be as popular again in a world gone mad on fast food..........'

this is far more that just another superb cookery book, published to accompany the BBC TV series of the same name.