TASTEMAKER CAROLINE EDEN

“I always say they're like postcards,” says Caroline Eden of her wildly success-ful ‘colour trilogy’ series of travelogue-cookbooks charting her adventures through Eastern Europe and Central Asia. “They're just my written interpretations of things I've eaten and places I've seen on my travels, with a smattering of recipes throughout,” she explains. Green Mountains (£28, Quadrille), the final instalment, sees Caroline walking the South Caucasus, from Armenia through Georgia and on to the Black Sea. Cultural commentary, history and cooking are woven together to genre-defying effect, revealing not only how to make authentic dishes from this part of the world (such as lamb with plums, green beans and cinnamon, and courgettes with Georgian spices and walnuts, pictured), but the world events that have shaped these countries and their rich culinary heritage. “Readers aren't intimidated by food in the same way they might be by the history of the Soviet Union,” explains Caroline. “It is the ideal gateway for telling these big, complicated stories.”

- Words Eilidh Boyd Tuckett

The author admits that, ironically, she is not the greatest of cooks. And she has no aspirations to be the next Nigella. “I'm not interested in feeding a family of four ona Wednesday; that’s not what I do, I want to tell people that there are really interesting rice recipes in Uzbekistan, because Koreans once settled there,” she says. Turning expansive topics into something more digestible — literally - i