Spice Trip: The Simple Way to Make Food Exciting

I wanted to cry when I first looked at this. It is so beautiful. It feels and smells wonderful (thick paper, colourful photographs of the people of the spices). More so, the layout is unhurried and the write-ups (the recipes) are anxiety free. Many of the recipes are introduced with the phrase 'incredibly easy'. This is so different from another recipe book we got recently which nearly gave my partner a panic attack in its lengthy description of making sour dough bread. The ingredients for these recipes are also easy to find in the supermarket and this, I feel, differs from many fashionable cook books whereby you find yourself going on a six mile hike to find some elusive herb.I had already made the green apple salsa and the tomato salsa (Divorced Eggs)from the preview before ordering and was suitably wowed. I've made the tomato and chilli jam (very chuffed) and the green chilli con carne as well in the last two days and my partner said he felt like crying, they were so good (I hadn't told him then that I had nearly cried earlier!). I like the way that the order is spice sectioned - it is very easy to find recipes. I also liked the smiling photos of the creators: Emma and Stevie.I missed the TV series - I was just interested in a cook book that was spice derived but not necessarily Indian as we already have Madhur Jaffrey and a great Indian takeaway.I love the way you get the socio-economic history of the spices linked with the generating countries and the compassionate acknowledgement of the West's colonial and slave-trading past. It is altogether holistic in its approach and there are spice remedies as well. Next on the list is Pears Poached in Cloves and Red Wine.This is a book that is fascinating on many different levels. Try and flip through it and you will find you have taken at least an hour.I have a post-script caveat unfortunatly and am taking my 5 stars down to 4 stars. The gluten free salt and pepper brownie recipe touts up its gluten status and there is no flour in the ingredient list. However! The recipe instructs you to fold in the flour. This utterly confused me! Another issue is the tablespoon of ground cloves in the orange and clove cake? I just put a teaspoon in as I think that is quite a lot.

We bought this book after watching the TV programme. It is well produced with good recipes, some of which we have tried successfully. There are a few typos but none are that important' you maybe get the feeling it was produced in a hurry. Nevertheless a nicely produced book and a useful addition to the kitchen if you enjoy cooking with spices. One important point is that you can get most of the items from supermarkets which is not always possible with recipes using unusual ingredients.

We love the layout of the book, the theming of it by spices (as was the programme) and have made some real corkers from it already - check out the orange and clove cake, an absolute gem of a dessert. The book is by Stevie Pale and Emma Grazette and both have an inventive approach to spices. GREAT book, we are really pleased with it and it's already becoming a must have about when we're planning menus for parties etc.

started watching the series on 4 when Emma made a polenta cake with pineapples, cloves & caramel - intrigued, so I bought the book & so glad I did too. this is not just a recipe book with page after page of glossy pictures of perfectly turned out cooking, it goes a lot more in depth about the key spices, their uses in herbal medicine & beauty regimes. if you are thinking about buying - STOP THINKING - buy it.

OK, I admit it. I am a cook book junkie that cannot stop coming out of a bookstore without at least buying one new cookbook. Saying that, I am quite disappointed with a number of previous purchases since they either fall into two categories - either they are beautifully stylized but not very practical and fun to cook with or they have great recipes but do not provide the necessary visual guide that motivates you to actually use them. This book is not suffering from either issue and is one of my best purchases of the year - not only are the photos in the book amazing, all the recipes are straight forward and accessible - you can judge a good cookbook by flicking through the pages and thinking 'ah, I like to cook this and that..." which happens a lot in this book.My recommendation is to get this treasure to add to your cookbook collection - I also will buy some to pass on to my friends.....