Ben's inspiring recipes and simple 'how to cook' videos...

Vietnamese cuisine is a real melting pot of flavours. It's heavily influenced by the French who occupied the country during the 19th Century so you'll see ingredients like French baguettes and pate commonly being eaten. Mix those up with more traditional South East Asian ingredients like noodles, chilli and coconut, add in wonderfully fragrant herbs and you have something remarkable. Vietnamese food is about fine-tuning your tasting skills to balance out sweet, sour, salty, umami, bitter and hot flavours. It's also about combining perfect textures, crunchy vegetables and silky meat or fish to create the perfect harmony of taste.

Everybody loves a good curry and our centuries old love affair with Indian food is as strong as ever. I've met quite a few Western trained Indian chefs who have all told me how tricky it is the master the art of great Indian food. Balancing out the flavours requires such skill.

The idea of making sushi can be a little intimidating, particularly when you hear stories of 15-year sushi chef apprenticeships. The truth is, it's pretty straightforward. You can experiment with loads of different fillings - they are not hard to find in your local shop, and if you're not a fan of handling raw fish, then use smoked fish or just vegetables instead. You could also try different meat fillings like hoisin duck or char sui pork if you're feeling adventurous.