The Spice Routes : Chronicles and Recipes from Around the World

Combining travelogue and recipes, this book tells the story of how Chris and Carolyn Caldicott followed the trails of the early spice merchants on their search for authentic spice recipes. As they travel through the Eastern Mediterranean, the Indian subcontinent, Asia, Africa and the Americas, they explain how indigenous spices were traded and how foreign spices arrived, and they explore the effect the spices have had on the local cuisines, supplying the recipes for the dishes they discovered along the way. Among their adventures are an encounter with an unscrupulous saffron-dealer in the souk in Aswan, an elephant hike through the jungles of south west Nepal, enrolment at the Thai Cooking School at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, and a trek across the Andes to Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas.

Chris and Carolyn Caldicott own the World Food Cafe in Covent Garden, where they cook and serve delicious vegetarian food from recipes collected on their travels. Chris is well known as a journalist and photographer. His articles and photographs appear regularly in newspapers and magazines including The Independent, the Observer, the Sunday Times, Conde Nast Traveller and Marie Claire. He has, since 1991, been an official photographer for the Royal Geographical Society and many of his photographs appear in Royal Geographical Society Illustrated. Chris and Carolyn are the authors of World Food Cafe, also published by Frances Lincoln.