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. I had also spent two years writing a vegetarian Indian cookery book; I knew how to make bitter cavolo nero leaves sing and how to tempt a beetroot-hater into eating a plateful. If you’re looking to expand your repertoire of vegetarian dishes or want to learn a bit more about how to use spices, then East will do that for you.

Boasting a wide range of dishes from India to Thailand to Japan and a host of other countries, this is a celebration of Asian cuisine like no other.When I ran out of books, I packed Arya and a notebook into a baby carrier and went on a food safari, to find the best laksa, bun cha or massaman curry in London. This makes it easy to find a recipe to make, whether it’s to match the ingredients you have, or to satisfy a culinary craving! Tap the tray to release any air bubbles, then bake for 12 minutes, or until the sponge springs back to the touch. Stir-fry for 1 minute, then add the onion and cook for 10 to 12 minutes, until it starts to turn golden brown and is soft. To my untrained palate, the recipes in East by Meera Sodha have an authentic taste and feel and her approach makes it easy to produce dishes that you may otherwise have veered away from.

The remaining recipes are vegan, with many of them based on Meera Sodha’s weekly column in The Guardian. Add the peas, mint, lime juice, 3 tbsp of sesame oil and the salt, and pulse a few times (don’t blend: you don’t want soup). In this collection, Meera serves up a feast of over 130 delicious recipes collected from three generations of her family: there’s everything from hot chappatis to street food, fragrant curries, to colourful side dishes and mouth-watering puddings. There are noodles, curries, rice dishes, tofu, salads, sides and sweets, all surprisingly easy to make and bursting with exciting flavours. There just aren’t any ‘dud’ recipes here – everything I have made has turned out really well due to the simplicity of the ingredient lists and comprehensive, straightforward instructions.Our BIR recipe book will show you step by step everything you need to cook curry as good as your favourite takeaway! I begged Wichet Khongphoon, the owner-chef of the Thai restaurant Supawan in central London, to show me how to make a tom kha gai soup; and Shuko Oda, the Japanese chef, to teach me how to make her walnut miso.

In Thailand, I had memorised every twist in the creation of som tam salad and counted down the minutes until my next pad thai. Again, the familiar-looking ingredients list caught my attention and, as with the curry, the recipe came out looking exactly like the picture.Line your tin with non-stick baking paper, folding it tightly into the corners so the paper comes up the sides of the tray by 2cm. All the freshness and lightness that hot weather demands, but with enough in there to keep tummies full.

Without cleaning the whisk, move on to the next bowl, whisking the yolks and caster sugar together for a couple of minutes until they double in volume, then stir the matcha flour mixture into the egg-yolk bowl. There are noodles, curries, rice dishes, salads and bakes, all surprisingly easy to make and bursting with exciting flavours. Here are surprising recipes for every day made using easy to find ingredients: mushroom and walnut samosas, oven-baked onion bhajis and beetroot and paneer kebabs.I discovered the wonderful world of the Asian larder: fermented, pickled and salted ingredients – kimchi, sweet miso and gochujang added flavour in an instant. Expanding on her unrivalled knowledge of Indian cuisine demonstrated in her two previous cookbooks, Meera Sodha goes a step further with East, exploring the diverse and celebrated vegan and vegetarian dishes in Eastern cooking.