Rick Stein’s Secret France

It is a great cookbook to read but not to cook from. For an ordinary cook this is a bit too complicated with hard to find ingredients. His other book "French odyssey" on the other hand is more down to earth and easier to cook from.

Top quality content and filming. Rick managed to convey the sense of most chef's encounters but tended to be a little repetitous. Very nostagic for someone who is familiar with the areas investigated. Culinary accounts at his gite in Provence were uneven and varied between too fast and too slow. One needed the video as well as the book.

The commentary is great, the recipes even better.Worth every penny!

I am a fan, so the review may be biased. But his style and over all content presentation is remarkable and consistent

Nicely written and laid out with an interesting commentary.

The book deserves 4 stars. Recipes look delicious and easy to prepare but a few of the ingredients wouldn't be the easiest to locate. The star removed is down to Amazon. I paid £18 to preorder the book with price promise to be cheapest. I had less than £1 credited once the book was despatched. It arrived today and today I saw it for £13 in Tesco - needless to say I shan't be preordering any further books with Amazon

This book is one of the best from Rick Stein because it captures the real France. The recipes and beautiful photographs brings the atmosphere of the markets and villages alive. You can taste the fresh food and sunshine in the pages of this book where you can share the secrets of France.

I have many Rick Stein cookery books but he has excelled this time. I have his French Odyssey but this book is better. It contains a great mixture of truly clear and reliable recipes for simple dishes that I have never been quite sure how to make properly, to more unusual regional recipes using the wonderful wealth of ingredients found in France but also readily available in the UK. I can't wait to get cracking in the kitchen but must first hide away my most-used of his books - from Venice to Istanbul - which is also fabulous.

I love Rick Stein, his warmth and the accessibility of his cooking. As others have commented, there is little new in the recipes here; but I don't think that was his intention. The point of his journey was to see if the France that inspired cooks of his generation still exists. As part of this he, rightly in my view, avoids the endless modernising and "reinvention" of solid recipes that other chef books are guilty of.The book itself is beautifully presented. I love the preamble he gives to each recipe, which builds the feeling of place. However I did think it was a shame that the book is organised by veg, chicken, meat etc and not by regions. The TV programme moves by area - Brittany, Jura and so on. The joy of the traditional France is all about how dishes relate to place, so I hoped it would guide us in the same way, which it sadly doesn't.

Excellent read and Rick suggests accompanying dishes