For me, I would rather be eating food than cooking it. I would also rather be watching a cookery programme than trying out the recipes myself. However, it doesn't mean I don't try to be a little adventurous and follow some great recipes I have in cook books, it just means they perhaps aren't made with as much love and attention as I should be giving them.

I have always enjoyed Rick Stein's programmes, me and my partner find it very relaxing to watch him travelling and cooking, and it's always great to see Chalky by his side, although sadly no longer with him. After Rick did the tour of Asia I thought it would be good to have a go at some of the recipes from his book so I bought this book, 'Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey'. It costs £17.50 through Amazon although might be cheaper if there was an offer on in Waterstones.

The book is a very vibrant orange colour and has a nice picture of Rick on the front. There are 320 pages in the book with some beautiful pictures of the recipes interspersed throughout. The book has 7 chapters in it and each one covers a different country/region and the recipes that are from that area. The chapters are; Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Bali, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. There is a written introduction to each chapter about the culture of food within that particular area.

I have tried several of the recipes from the book and I must say they have actually turned out ok! There are a lot of fish recipes and I really like fish so that's worked out well. The instructions are well written and clear to understand. I miss having nutritional information against each recipe as a lot of books have that in now but I can estimate! My favourite recipe is 'Chef Wan's prawn and rice noodle salad' which sounds complicated to do but I do my own simplified version of it!

The only drawback of the book is the amount of ingredients needed for each recipe. Once you have bought a few things it's ok as you can reuse them once they're in your cupboard but it does make it more complicated and expensive the more ingredients you need to add per recipe. You might find you can skip a couple of ingredients though without noticing the difference!

A nice book, especially for someone who is passionate about cooking and learning about recipes from the Far East.