ILL-TIMED hangovers, puffer fish, fiery chillies and silk worm pupae sound like a recipe from hell. But brought together by food critic Tom Parker Bowles, they are the ingredients for The Year of Eating Dangerously.

Parker Bowles - Camilla's lad - is bored of pre-packaged bland-tasting foods served up in supermarkets and restaurants across the UK and sets off on a global search for real flavours, risky ingredients and to discover the most exotic and dangerous food from around the world.

From the dangers of West country elvers and the French song-birds that are the ultimate in endangered gastronomy to the Masai warriors and their bloody feasts, Parker Bowles takes you on a colourful, descriptive and extremely funny journey that will leave your mouth watering and, occasionally, your stomach churning. You can almost taste the cobra in Hong Kong, bowls of fresh tripe in Laos, and canine stew in Korea. After the Annual Jack Daniels World Championship Invitational Barbecue, in Nashville - which proves to be a piece of meat too far - you too feel the author's pain when he cries: "I feel like an anaconda after a particularly large mammalian dinner".

You have to admire Parker Bowles as he eats to excess, often with a blinding hangover. "And when I get steaming drunk, it's guaranteed that I'll have not just an early start but the prospect of something appalling to put in my mouth too."

His greed takes him to places where men risk death to collect food and where a chef must undertake four years training before preparing the potentially deadly, toxic fugu puffer fish.

This is an eye-opening adventure by someone who is curious and brave and whose enthusiasm for food keeps you turning the pages. By the end, even ant egg salad becomes just another lunch.