Have you seen Valentine on the telly? He’s a bit hard to miss actually. When I first spotted him I thought my box had gone on the blink, as his head seemed disproportionally large for his body. I then discovered he is the son of Sir Frederick Archibald Warner, GCVO, KCMG ex Conservative MP and that his mother is the wonderfully named Simone Georgina de Ferranti. So it’s probably genetic; like floppy fringes.

This is a journey through Serendip (Sri Lanka) by food. To peoples ‘ houses via markets and memories, taking in curries, street snacks, sticky desserts, celebration foods and family favourites. The recipes are easy to follow with handy tips when needed.

Chapters headed ‘Fall off the carb free wagon’, ‘Work to live, live to eat’, ‘Remote control and a meal for one’ don’t exactly inspire me, but I am merely a heterosexual man and what do I know of the modern young woman’s needs? ‘Bugger all’, says my wife.

The book is divided into sensible sections that essentially follow the long timeline of an Italian meal – antipasto, brodo, pasta, carne e pesce, verdura and dolce. Each is punctuated by Rosa’s reminiscences of her life and her family’s life in Sicily and the photographs throughout are in the currently popular style which flattens colours to attractive earthy tones.

Strada della Nonna or The way of the Granny. Sounds a bit like a kung fu movie when you (very roughly) translate it. Italian kung fu that is, which presumably involves loudly honking your horn at people whilst flicking an imaginary beard. This is a book about a boy growing up under the culinary influence of a granny with ‘a six foot’ pasta rolling pin who would arrive in Sheffield from Modena, driven by her husband and with a car boot full of food treasures.

Leaving aside the heretical idea that we might actually want to take longer over cooking than previously, in order to have something to do of an afternoon to prevent the slide into daytime TV and the inevitable unscrewing of the Costcutter Chardonnay at 3 p.m, is this the book we want right now?

Just take a look at the back of those packets of veg – the country of provenance is always stated and these days it seems that country is all too often one that’s very far away. Some even long-haul distance.

With her first book, Cooking Like Mummyji, Vicky Bhogal used her experience of growing up an Anglo-Asian to bring real Punjabi cooking back home. Here were authentic recipes that were, to non Asians, a bit of an eye-opener. Then came a Year of Cooking like Mummyji which went further by cooking with the seasons in a variety of Asian styles. Now with this book, Vicky has embraced pretty much the whole world as the title suggests.

You certainly can’t complain you don’t know what you’re getting when you buy this book – it does exactly what it says on the cover. The pleasures of choosing, growing and cooking the little red devils is what this book is all about.

Some people are calling him the vegetarian Jamie Oliver which is a bit of an insult in my eyes – Simon is far better than that. The comparison comes from Simon’s fondness for big flavours on a plate, no mincing about and a bit of chucking it in. His restaurant Greens is an award winning place and looking at and tasting these recipes you can see why.