Published to accompany Rick Stein's new five-part television series for BBC2, this new book starts where French Odyssey left off - at the mouth of the Rhone in the port of Marseilles. Reluctantly abandoning his idyllic canal boat, the Anjodi, Rick takes to the public ferry system which plies between the islands and coastlines of the Mediterranean. The book contains over 100 recipes divided by types of ingredient or types of dish - from mezze and tapas to calamari and couscous.Although Mediterranean food is always considered to be very healthy, by virtue of its ingredients, Rick will not shy from luxurious ice creams and sticky pastries and the book will also include basic recipes, accompaniments and sauces. He introduces the book with a diary of his gastronomic journey, recounting the many interesting characters and interesting dishes he discovered en route. Mediterranean food is first and foremost the simple cooking of simple ingredients so it translates extremely well into everyday dishes that cooks of all levels will enjoy making, and above all, eating.

Author Biography

Rick Stein OBE is one of Britain's favourite cookery writers and chefs. In 2004 he was named the BBC Food Personality of the Year at the BBC Radio Food and Farming Awards for his Food Heroes television series. His other tv programmes include Rick Stein's Taste of the Sea and Seafood Lovers' Guide - which won the Television Programme Award at the Glenfiddich Award for Food Book of the Year, and Taste of the Sea, which won both the 1995 Andre Simon Memorial Fund Food Book Award and the 1996 Good Food Award for Cookery Book of the Year. His most recent seafood book, Rick Stein's Seafood, won the coveted James Beard Foundation Cookbook of the Year Award in 2005. Rick Stein owns The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall, which every year attracts thousands of fish lovers from Britain and abroad. He also runs the highly acclaimed Padstow Seafood School, two smaller restaurants, St. Petroc's Bistro and Rick Stein's Cafe, a deli and a fish-and-chip takeaway. Rick was awarded his OBE in 2003 for services to tourism.