A huge book with beautiful photos. I want to eat all the food. Whoever wrote the captions for the landscape photos suffered a severe lack of imagination and gumption. Not very descriptive. The recipes look manageable, I have cooked a few of them with success. ( )

Bought this book the other day because the recipes looked very good and I could probably get most of the ingredients within a 150 km radius.. (country boy). I chose to do "Spicy Rice Pudding" and followed the recipe (almost)exactly. The accompanying picture could not have had the 2 tsp of allspice as it would have been very brown in colour - the picture shows a cream coloured pudding. I thought that would be too much so the only change I made was to use but 1 tsp of allspice - it too was far too brown in colour and far too spicy. In addition - I cooked it 30 - 45 minutes longer than suggested and it was still quite runny. Remember - the only change I mad was halving the allspice. It really is disconcerting when the first recipe done from a book doesn't turn out. The book is being returned to the store tonight. ( )