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transform your kitchen with ancient flavours

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As a cameraman and documentary director for many years, I've had the opportunity to see a lot of the world. As an history buff and avid cook I started to collect recipes from the places I found myself in. The more traditional... the stranger… the older... the better.

Tribes in the Amazon, The Maasai in Kenya... What recipes had been passed down from their grandma's... and their grandma's grandma's. How far back could I go?

The Time Traveller’s Cookbook combines the loves of history and cooking to create a unique book that can do something that no other history book can. More than just words on a page, it gives you something you can smell and taste and live. You can feel what it was like for an Ancient Egyptian... or Aztec... or Spartan warrior to come home.

Collecting these recipes was fascinating. I often

found myself in random villages and kitchens of old women whom I had no common language with other than the food itself.

And I've had the back of my hand slapped with wooden spoons more than once for stirring a pot the wrong way… or too fast… or not enough.

But the Time Traveller’s Cookbook is more than just random recipes collected during my travels. It’s also heavily researched.

Times change and some ingredients used commonly today weren’t available to those who lived in those places in ancient times. So I’ve tried to find a blend and walk the line between historical fact, tradition, and modern availability, to create recipes that are as true to their origins as possible while not being impossible to find the ingredients for.

In the pages of the Time Traveller’s Cookbook, you’ll find recipes for Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners and Desserts enjoyed by the

Ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Celts, Incas, Aztecs, Minoans, Mongols, Spartans and many more.

These are also paired with modern recipes from each area so you can see how tastes have evolved and changed… or, in many cases, how they’ve remained true to their past.

Many of the recipes are simple to make. Some are a little more complicated. I wanted to illustrate a broad range that didn’t just show the meals adorning the tables of Pharoahs and kings, but those enjoyed by commoners too. And I’m proud of the balance I found.

The biggest surprise to many is just how familiar most of these smells and tastes are to us today. A great many of these ancient recipes remain with us in some form. As a species, it seems that we worked out what we liked early on, and many of our currently enjoyed favourites have literally stood the test of time.