There are some delicious-looking recipes for me to try, but even the vegan ones depend too heavily on oil for my taste. All the freshness and lightness that hot weather demands, but with enough in there to keep tummies full.

I expected the tofu chunks to be a little more crisp (the method asks you to coat them in cornflour and fry first) but the sweet tomato and soy sauce coating took away from that a little. When Made in India was published in the UK, it became an instant top-ten bestseller and was named one of the year's best books by many newspapers and periodicals. Lifting the parchment at the scored end, roll the sponge up again fairly tightly (but without squeezing out the cream). You may not see this as a criticism; cookbooks are, as in the name, designed and written for you to cook from, so who cares what else is in there? Made all the more special as this was a gift from our daughter who left all of her notes on each dish as she cooked her way through the book!It’s the sort of cookbook that has you inadvertently saying ‘ooh, that looks good’ or ‘I need that in my life’ with every turn of a page. 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.

Stir again and bring the mixture to the boil, then put the lid on, turn the heat down to a whisper and cook for a further 15 minutes. There are beautiful photos that will really get you drooling and I was pleasantly surprised how well the instructions are written. The techniques and flavors in this are definitely very approachable to a cook who feels apprehensive about trying “Asian” cooking. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.East and south Asian cuisine has always readily lent itself to a plant-based diet and books like these are great examples that moving away from meat isn't necessarily a loss, but an opportunity to diversify your range of cooking.

I appreciate Meera Sodha’s ability to pleasantly surprise by bringing simple ingredients together in new ways. There are warming noodles, curries, rice dishes, tofu, salads, sides and sweets, all surprisingly easy to make and bursting with exciting flavours. Packed with straightforward recipes to suit every occasion, I have cooked authentic-tasting dishes that I have gone back to over and over again because they have become real family favourites.

Separate the whites of the eggs from the yolks into two large bowls and add the caster sugar to the yolks. Using a large spatula, fold the egg whites into the yolks, being careful not to knock out too much air. There are no frighteningly long ingredient lists or recherche spices - just simple recipes that really work. And even if a recipe didn’t immediately strike me as appealing, her description of it always had me excited for it by the end. Most recipes use ingredients I could source from the local supermarket, I appreciated there were substitute suggestions for more hard to find ingredients such as using dry sherry in place of saki.