Review: Coast to Coast – Rick Stein

This is one of my favourite Rick Stein books, even as a bit of an ichthyophobiac I found there were plenty of other recipes to try and many of the seafood and fish recipes are very easy to adapt.

The book is split into 7 chapters each covering a different area of the world. Starting in Britain and Ireland and finishing in The Americas, it covers a lot of very different cuisines and styles of cooking.

One of the dishes I have cooked many times is the Lulu’s roast chicken with ginger, pasta, tomatoes and the roasting juices. On paper it sounds a bit odd, but it is a completely delicious dish, the splat marks in the pages pay testament to that.

There are curries, risottos, stir-fries and soups, plus some old favourites like cauliflower cheese or beef stroganoff.

If you have a sweet tooth there are also a few puddings, but the book is much more about the savoury dishes.

Other noteworthy dishes are the American corn ‘oysters’ which are actually fritters (no oysters) and the beef rendang with cucumber sambal.

This book gets a big thumbs up from me as the recipes are very straight forward and the ingredients used are readily available. We’ve tried about a third of the recipes, every dish has been delicious and turned out exactly as we were expecting. Having flipped through again to refresh my memory for this review I now want to make the soupe au pistou.