Bring to the boil – but watch it doesn’t boil over – then turn the heat down to a whisper and cook for about 30 minutes, stirring fairly frequently to make sure the rice doesn’t stick and burn. However, as a vegan, my preference is always to have a vegan, fully plant-based cookbook to look through. If you have any cooking capability you will be able to navigate that and also any substitutions - some are already mentioned.

There are some delicious-looking recipes for me to try, but even the vegan ones depend too heavily on oil for my taste. I had been soothed by my first congee in Hong Kong and had my taste buds electrified in London’s Chinatown by a bowl of dan dan noodles. There are several mistakes in the book, eg one recipe says you need a large frying pan with a lid, but never mentions when you're supposed to put the lid on. One minor downside for me was the ingredients are only listed with grams and not ounces but luckily I also got some electric scales for Christmas so I was saved the pain of having to convert the measurements to use my scales with weights.Recipes are easy to make, don't require any special equipment and contain mostly easy to find ingredients. Although oil is used, it’s not difficult to reduce or remove it if you are trying to be WFPBNO - for example, chilli tofu recipes is written to be deep fried, but it does no harm to the recipe to simply dry fry or cook the tofu in the air fryer with no or minimal oil. Perfect for: Anyone who is a fan of Meera's two other books, Made in India and Fresh India, or who loves the variety of cuisines from across Asia. Tuck that end of parchment over that edge of the cake and begin to loosely roll the sponge from one short end to the other, rolling the baking parchment with it. This meant that elaborate dishes, or those that required too much time to prepare or cook, were left out.

Add the garlic, chilli and cashews, and cook for a couple of minutes, then add the tomatoes and pop the lid on. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The biggest limitation of the past two years was not being able to travel to the countries whose food I wanted to explore, as I had for my Indian cookbooks. I don't normally review recipe books, but the dishes in this book are relatively simple to make and taste SO GOOD.Drawing from her 'New Vegan' Guardian column, Meera Sodha's stunning new collection also features plenty of brand-new recipes inspired by a wide range of Asian cuisines. And because of the wide variety of recipes represented in this book, I have ventured into cuisines that I had previously thought to be too complex for me to cook – the Sichuan recipes are an example of that, with Meera’s Mushroom Mapo Tofu and Kung Pao Cauliflower now regulars in our house. The remaining recipes are vegan, with many of them based on Meera Sodha’s weekly column in The Guardian.