Curiously shaped, intriguingly coloured fruits and vegetables from faraway countries are becoming increasingly familiar sights in our supermarkets and ethnic grocery stores. Many people are deterred from experimenting with these unusual ingredients by a lack of available information regarding identification, selection, preparation and use. The result is that a vast source of exciting new flavours has not been tapped. In this marvelous book Jane Grigson and Charlotte Knox have remedied that situation: Their aim is to inform, intrigue, delight and thus inspire the more widespread use of exotic fruits, vegetables and spices. The unique combination of Charlotte Knox's meticulous, intensely beautiful watercolours and Jane Grigson's evocative, informed text will lead the most cautious cook to new culinary adventures.
Each illustration is accompanied by details of how to prepare and cook the ingredients, by fascinating historical background and by recipes all described with Jane Grigson's flair for conveying taste, texture and fragrance. The fruits range from yellow carambola, or "star fruit," with its delicious syrup, to persimmon, or Sharon fruit; from scented lychee to Malaysian mangosteen; from the humble looking passion fruit of sublime acidic sweetness to an "unkempt hedgehog of a fruit" called rambutan. Vegetables include the elegant drumstick, the cool and crisp white radish and an astonishingly wide variety of beans from yard long, sataw and cluster to hyacinth and the decorative winged beans. The banana leaf, lemon grass and the gingerlike Chinese key are some of the herbs and spices to which an enticing introduction is offered. Although the book is highly practical, it is far more than an illustrated collection of recipes: It is an invaluable guide to identification and a striking collaboration of imaginative culinary wisdom and artistic flair. Cooking with Exotic Fruits and Vegetables is a book to enjoy, to savour and indeed to treasure.

Jane Grigson, who graduated from Cambridge university and worked in art galleries and in publishing, has been a cookery writer for the London Observer since 1968. For the past few years she has been particularly interested in fruits and vegetables, and has produced Jane Grigson's Fruit Book and Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book.

Charlotte Knox has worked as a free-lance illustrator for the last eleven years. She studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford, and St. Martins School of Art, London. Married, with two small boys, she lives in London.